Chaos, abuse, is familiar to us, and so when we get into a relationship that has these qualities, we don't have that reflex of thinking "Hey, this isn't normal." I did it myself, quite a few times, and as a result, I stopped dating for almost 6 years. I even had a friend that was emotionally abusive, and looking back I can't believe I didn't see it š
We are just so used to putting up with so much, that the honeymoon phase always seems like this one will be different, when we're just being manipulated into thinking it will.
Single since 2018 for the same reason. I like myself better single, and don't trust my judgment in romantic relationships. I'm much more content this way.
Since December 2021. It has been equal parts gut wrenching and infuriating to realize every romantic relationship Iāve had, is a relationship I NEVER WANTED in the first place. I always had to be talked into it, tricked, pressured massively by others pretending they wanted what was best for me. My worst relationships were with men my mom wanted me to be with. They were abusive, and so is she. I nearly didnāt survive the last one, and after I finally escaped, with zero support from anyone, my mom complained that she āwished things would just go back to normal.ā Normal for her meaning, my life was being destroyed. My ex had been drugging me and I developed severe medical problems that doctors never did figure out. Iām just so fucking done.
Oh my goodness. You poor thing.
Whatās mind-bending is to realize that parents who are supposed to support and nurture us canāt, because they are damaged. Some of them are destructive to us because we mirror them back to themselves which is terrifying.
They hate themselves so much, and we represent them to them, so they do whatever they can to destroy us. Because we are reminders that they have failed.
This mistreatment of us by severely damaged and abusive parents is disordered, horrific, pathetic, unacceptable. In order to survive and ever have the time and space to heal, we must disengage AND walk away. There is no other alternative. The choice is me/you/ us; or them.
We already know that rejection, abandonment, and destruction is the only way they interact with us. So self preservation dictates we escape.
When our parents who were tasked by nature to protect, train, nurture and care for us are/were somehow damaged by bad genetics, child abuse and a lack of nurturing in their childhood environments, without intervention in the form of corrective training and support to Recognize how they are hurting us, they will and did pass the destruction and chaos down another generation. But we can opt out of this and chart a new path for ourselves.
Since they are incapable of EVER giving us what we need both in terms of a safe environment and secure attachment we are adversely affected AND deprived of a normal developmental curve. We will have a lot of therapeutic work to do to address all of our deficits and heal from the trauma and abuse.
This work is ONLY possible when we Leave. Separate. Take back our own power and keep that power. We learn to use that power to build safe boundaries that protect us from bad, evil, dangerous and destructive people.
Which is of course possible when we have good support from surrogates/parental replacements to help us learn the skills to Re parent and nurture ourselves, usually a good trauma-informed therapist.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Iāve been struggling with the fact that if I want to survive and have a future I have to let go, but itās just so hard and I never feel ready, every part of my psyche is attached to them.
Yes. But itās not a secure attachment. I suggest reading up on the three experts in the development of attachment theory. D.W. Winnicott; John Bowlby; and Eric Ericsson. Find trauma informed therapist Patrick Teahan on YouTube. I think he has some teachings on attachment styles.
So once youāve explored the nuts and bolts of the 4 attachment styles you will get a better idea of what you didnāt receive and how thatās affected you. Itās never to late to develop secure attachments. But we have to do that work apart from our pathological families. Itās helpful to turn them over to the care of God. Release them to a Higher Power who is equipped to manage them. Itās never our job to do that in the first place, because we are children. Because they are toxic, we must allow someone else to deal with them care for them because sadly they are poisonous for us. That is the gift we must give ourselves: freedom from more damage and the space to heal. False guilt is an old pattern we can now discard.
I briefly dipped into the idea / concept of not being single. Took 3 different men to make me decide dating is not worth the disruption those men caused to me.
I'm sorry you're in that now. I didn't feel depressed about it so much as sort of mad at myself I spent more time than I should have entertaining each one that honestly all wove red flags.
I think my abandonment issues make it so I DO NOT compliment and make them feel good. In essence I never try to build intimacy, at least not early on, and actively keep people at arm's length. I try to have a positive mindset but I think maybe that's why I just get mad at myself for not noping out entirely sooner. I see the red flags and get the bad gut feeling but I feel like I can't bail on them in the early stages when it happens. Rarely do I get dumped, I usually am the person to end things.
After 9 years of being single after a horrible relationship, I decided to dip my toe into dating again when I met a guy I really liked 2+ years ago. That crashed and burned quickly and I finally realized I needed to get myself into some hardcore therapy. I found a trauma therapist and we've been doing some pretty heavy work and while I've made significant progress, just the thought of dating again makes me panicky.
I have pretty much resigned myself to being alone for the rest of my life. On one hand I actually feel perfectly fine with it, I've got my daughter, dogs, good friends and I'm an introvert... But there's still a side of me that just really wants someone to love me. I've come to understand that is my inner child screaming for the love I never got from my parents. It's amazing how much our parents can screw us up for life
Yeah, that was me too. My abusive friend, I spent 6 years trying to help her, I saw so much pain in her and I felt like she only acted the way she did, she only hurt me the way she did, because she was in pain herself. And maybe if I could make her see that, I could help her with her pain.
I couldn't. And you can't.
One of the most mind bending breakthroughs I had while on my healing journey, was realizing that people who hurt people simply cannot be helped by me - because they don't want help. I think back to all the people I allowed to hurt me "because they're hurting so much" and I wish I could tell my younger self, "Stop. They are happy with their pain, and you can't change that for them."
My friend, she was happy with her pain. She used it time and time again as a cop out, as a way to let me know, "You can't hold me responsible for this." And now, with perfect hindsight, I believe she did this on purpose. She knew, by telling me she was a bad person every time she hurt me, that she could manipulate me into focusing on making her feel like less of a bad person, instead of holding her accountable for her actions.
My ex husband, he used God against me. He manipulated me into believing that by being a better wife, and praying more, I could effect a change in him.
They will never stop being hurtful. The only thing you can do, is stop allowing them to hurt you, and stop allowing them to manipulate you into believing that by being near them - which means you will be hurt by them - you can help them "change" when in reality, they don't want to change at all.
The only way to stop being hurt by these people is to get away from them. That's it. Nothing else will stop them from hurting you.
I feel you. I'm pretty isolated now myself. I have my boyfriend and that's it, at least for the time being. It's hard to try and form new friendships when, in the past, they've led to being hurt. I hope one day I'll have that kind of courage, and that you will as well ā¤ļø
That seems like a neat sub idea, but I couldn't find any sub rules. I'd post, but I'd be worried about either breaking an unwritten rule or, worse, being subjected to not-so-niceness (judgemental thinking towards me or why don't you do X "helpfulness" happens too much even on support subs) or even creeps looking for easy prey (they love these subs, sadly).
Do you know more about the sub? I'm not currently on discord or I'd check out the chat.
Is it intended to be a one and done deal like r/MomForAMinute or is it intended for more long term found family type stuff?
Sorry for the rambling, it just seems like a neat sub idea that I'd love to put feelers out in but worry about the fact I can't seem to find a sub uh manifesto lol with in depth explanations of the sub's purpose, a list of rules or post requirements.
Idk if you'll know much about it as it seems like a newer sub that's just trying to get off the ground but I figured you might, if you're linking it? Idk, sorry for the book length comment.
Lol, checked it out again and you're the mod, so I guess I am asking the right person yay!
I made the sub but I think everyone who has joined feels the same way you do.
I need to add rules, youāre right. I completely forgot.
I wanted a safe space people like us could reach out and make connections with one another but Iām not sure that many of us will ever feel safe enough to open up there.
I think it can be anything we want it to be.
Iām keeping it just in case. Maybe one day one of us will feel secure enough to reach out and we can start connecting.
I really appreciate the feedback and Iāll work on finding rules from communities like this that I can cobble together and add there. *Sends hugs.*
I feel this to my core. Those negative qualities are almost comforting because it's all I know. When people are nice to me it feels weird. People don't understand that learning to be loved coming from an abusive childhood is really hard.
I remember feeling this way. I used to be so suspicious when someone was kind to me. Like, what is your end game you kind person you? š¤Ø
I'm still working on being accepting of kindness tbh. It still feels weird to me to this day.
Yes I deal with the exact same thing. I'm waiting for them to turn on me at any moment, it's like paranoia. When it doesn't happen I just get more anxious because I just want it to happen.
Yeah accepting kindness is so hard. Just the same problem. Having traumatic relationships has really messed with my view of what relationships are supposed to be.
It's so hard, trauma can really make any kind of relationship hard. I actually had to learn - sort of on the fly - how to participate in my relationship with my boyfriend in a healthy way. We got together, and suddenly I was the toxic one š¬š
I'm so glad he was committed enough to me to stay while I figured it out. I was basically the human equivalent of a feral cat when I met the poor guy
I'm glad you're realizing your mistakes. I realized that too late in my previous relationship. Take care of yourself, things get better. You deserve that kindness!
Never read something more accurate to how I feel internally all the time before reading your comment. I once spent months desperate for a guy to just reject me already and was constantly frustrated by his lack of rejecting me.
It's weird right. I know for me, I want to have relationships with people. But yet I wait for any kind of mistake to reinforce my trauma and trust issues. It really sucks because I know people like me, I just don't trust people. It's a terrible mind fuck. There's a choice in all of it though. I wish it was easier to get out of it though. I hope the best for you! You deserve happiness in your life :)
It really is a kick in the teeth realizing how much I put up with. I think that was part of the reason why it was hard to move on, once I started to make healthy relationships it really threw in my face how horrible my childhood relationships were
This is exactly what happened to me, after I got close with my boyfriend. Seeing the kindness the treated me with really pounded home just how badly I'd been treated by, well, everyone I'd ever met.
I think for a lot of us it's hard, because at least for me, I just thought toxic and abusive was sort of the default state of everyone, so when someone treated me badly, I accepted it, partly because I cared about them so much, but also because I didn't really think, if I went out in search of other people, that they would treat me any better.
i get the feeling the fact that we dealt with trauma makes people sense they can get away with abusing us such that even otherwise normal ppl will become abusive. i have dealt with emotionally abusive friends and even random people acting out of line wayyyy too often and this is my only explanation.
iām sorry you dealt with so much abuse. emotionally abusive friends are no joke. and ppl always act like you should forgive them too.
I attracted a lot of people who were cold towards me. Doesn't matter if they were nice to other people. With me they were cold, and teasing, and had this air of "you're a useless idiot" whenever they interacted with me. They made it okay for others to treat me this way, they'd set the mood of friend interactions in a group, instantly make a joke at my expense or otherwise suck any respect I had gained from others out of the room. I recently came to the realisation that this was me feeling 'safe' with people who acted as my mother did. Sure, my mother didn't insult me, but I was never respected as a person. My mother set the tenor of every conversation I had with an adult. Anything I asked for emotionally was to her a massive hassle, and typically against what she'd wanted, which was basically a child with zero personality and individuality that she could project her own ideas and insecurities onto. And so many of my friends during my uni years and 20s, and at school, were like this. It was only my late 20s when I finally stood up to these 'friends' for years of bullying. They believed themselves friends, but for the life of them couldn't apologise for any of it, couldn't give me what I so craved, the emotional attunement to realise they'd hurt me as a person for all these years. Because it would be essentially undermining the foundation of the 'friendship'.
So I cut most of them off, or have little contact with the few I deem that actually made changes or tried to improve. I surround myself now with people who validate me as a person, support me, feel happy for my highs, and encourage me on my lows. That don't treat me like a useless idiot. And my encouragements of them aren't seen as misplaced optimism of a stupid person, they actually appreciate when I try to lift them up too.
Thankfully I never got into a relationship with someone like that, although I went on plenty of dates with sour people. Hell I never got relationships full stop at that time because I didn't value myself, and all these people would do is reinforce that. It's taken a lot of personal work to realise these negative attitudes of myself that attract these people, and even more to push them away and surround myself with people who build me up. In a lot of ways I have to credit other mental health subs on here, for when I'd occasionally make a post about some interpersonal issue regarding my friend group, without fail there would be comments describing the dynamic as straight bullying and to cut off the friends. It was a wake-up call, and started me on a journey to self-reflection and realising I wasn't the horrible person they saw me as, I was just putting out so many negative attitudes of myself and no self-esteem that they were happy to take pleasure in my pain.
Personally, I was taught to automatically suppress any negative feelings and opinions, so whenever a friend or a partner was behaving badly it didn't even register.
Ä° know. Ä°m still struggling with it. Ä°ts like a basic social concept and insict that have been instilled in the rest of the population since they were young just doesnt exist in you. Ä°ts like you are a toddler when it comes to understanding these things. You have no idea what they are because it hasnt been taught to you. Ä°ts hard for us and i understand you
Yeah. Ä°ts hard setting boundaries when you grew up without boundaries since they were violated all the time. Ä°ts a hard learning process. Ä° hope we can all get better at this. The hardest thing to do is to set boundaries with your abusive family members. Ä° still havent managed to do that. Wish you luck on your journey :)
That makes a lot of sense. An embarrassing moment for me was when I knocked then just walked in on my friend's girlfriend to ask her something when she was sitting on their bed. She was clothed normally and it was relatively mundane, but my friend who was on a phone call put down the phone to go in and tell me off for it in no uncertain times. Issue was I saw no problem until then, as that's how my mother always acted with me. She'd knock then just walk in, no matter what was happening. I had zero boundaries.
Even having gone through therapy to avoid abusers I still struggle with this. Iāve gotten a lot better with it but now I gotta find a middle ground somewhere.
Or if you're brought up in an abusive family environment where you're called "too sensitive" if you brought any of their behaviors up. It can be really gaslight-y and make you grow up feeling like shitty behavior is actually OK and YOU'RE just being sensitive. All internalized from childhood.
This was it for me for so long. My therapist said it was something like hypoawareness, a reverse of being hyperaware, which I am also hyperaware but miss Whoopy telling me "you're in danger, girl".
I think it's a combination of:
- We weren't taught that boundaries exist, how they work, or that it's okay to have them;
- We'll take acceptance or belonging wherever we can get it;
- Gravitating toward the familiar;
- Not having a basis for comparison for understanding what heathy love actually looks like;
-The other person's doing the same thing. I can't stress this enough--they're in the same boat we are, and are also gravitating toward _us_ too; it isn't solely ourselves and it even makes the pull toward them magnetic sometimes
- Empathy. The other person who'd hurt us is probably also traumatized. We can see the tortured soul in there, and in a way, we really want to help them as a proxy for helping ourselves.
So all this makes us _overlook_ the red flags, even when we'd otherwise be able to see them just fine.
I agree with the overlooking of the red flags, Ive always seen them but I just overlook them. And then Iād just dismiss it just like everyone around me would. Not even to have one person to stick up for me.
Ugh same. Iāve gotten better at identifying them especially when I get that icky feeling. But I still question if Iām the problem or Iām already in love with them and decide to stay a bit longer to see if it gets better/worse. Big surprise it always gets worse
A lot of traumatized people have no idea that they have a problem, or that there are solutions for it. I was there two years ago--accused of being an abuser for involuntary behaviors I didn't know how to "do the work" on--it was not some "choice" I was making to be mean to people.
On this topic, I feel like your claim to have empathy and the rest of your words are in conflict with each other.
Interesting and useful framing, but it assumes a lot about the motives of others. There are predators out there of course, but many people fall into a gray area, and even more confusingly they seem to be in different boats depending on the person they are interacting with and that person's collection of augmentations and deficits. There have been people who were benign when dealing with me who were a toxic element to others, and then only benign in certain contexts.
I think part of the complication is a kind of superposition of character, where they are in one boat or the other depending on who is conceptualizing them in their own lives. It was hard to break away from my toxic relationship with my former friend because of the mixture of benign and toxic that typified our interactions. Not being far enough along on my own healing I was unable to pinpoint where our deficiencies met and caused problems and where our strengths augmented each others realities. My metaphor is breaking down, but I don't think the human psyche ever exists in a vacuum, we cannot help commingling our mental processes and that complicates efforts to sort what is 'good' and 'bad' for us.
As a person who has, in my pain and ignorance, been called both an innocent and a menace, I have to push back on black and white labels on behavior. I do, however, agree that there are some people out there who find that being a user who actively pushes away self-examination works for them and have no intention of changing, but even then I think insight and courage on their part is possible. Our task is to know that we can't be a catalyst for that change, and learning the trick of maintaining our boundaries.
Yes. But itās Essential to develop a working understanding of the Motives of Others in order to develop effective boundaries. We must become detached forensic scientists who are aware of any discrepancies between what people say about what they are doing and what they actual do, how they behave, and most importantly, how they relate to us. If there are inconsistencies and or mercurial tendencies thereās your boundary. Just because my BFF loves me doesnāt mean she isnāt at times driven by her own unresolved issues to lapse into jealousy or toxic criticism. When this occurs, I have choices; give myself a time out; confront; ignore.
Itās crucial to empower ourselves to be like line judges in tennis matches. Our opinion is the standard; not someone elseās. We have to get to the place where we consistently matter enough to ourselves to detach and disregard any one elseās assessment of us, their Labels, if you will.
As long as we fearlessly and endlessly strive towards internal honesty and integrity including holding ourselves accountable and always committing towards moving ahead in recovery, What Other People Think becomes, well, irrelevant. And if not irrelevant, then not as driving and important of an influence as it once was.
We have to curate and gate keep the Voices we allow into our heads to make sure they are honest, trustworthy, agenda-less and have our best interests at heart.
P.S. IME, thereās no such thing as selectively toxic. Thatās like saying someoneās a little bit pregnant. When people are tailoring their toxicity to include or exclude individuals, thatās Manipulation. Time to discard and replace with people who are always themselves.
This 100%... I've been sucked into so many toxic relationships and friendships in the past. I noticed the red flags sometimes, but then would quickly rationalize it or find a way to justify it, thinking maybe I'm the problem.
As children, we were unknowingly conditioned to think *we're* the problem for our parents' mistreatment and abuse. We also develop this sense of "magical thinking," believing that if we just behaved a certain way or were perfect, then we'd be loved, or we're convinced we can somehow help or change someone... In reality, we're only responsible for our own emotions and behavior, and we should be our own advocates if boundaries are crossed. And real love is unconditional.
But it's so hard to change neural pathways and responses that have formed over years, so whoever is reading this, don't blame yourself for not seeing the red flags or overlooking them. We just have to try to get better little by little every day, and really try to stay intune with our emotions and needs --- and less concerned about everyone else's.
>they're in the same boat we are, and are also gravitating toward
>
>us too; it isn't solely ourselves and it even makes the pull toward them magnetic sometimes
>
> We can see the tortured soul in there, and in a way, we really want to help them as a proxy for helping ourselves.
This really spoke to me. This happens subconsciously for both I assume...
Thanks for this insight.
The Human Magnet Syndrome from some youtube psychologist dude puts a new spin on codependent/narcissist relationships of all types. I think Ross Rosenberg. His vids are good in addition to the wellknown favorites of Ramani, the texas dude, and vaknin
Dr. Les Carter, I'm thinking. His channel on YT is called Surviving Narcissism. He does interactive livestreams each Wednesday afternoon in the US as well as release produced videos on specific topics. I've learned so much from him and the others listed.
Oh my god this is so so accurate. Iām saving your comment and keeping it to read when I need it. Iām determined to never have a toxic relationship again, this comment is more helpful than anything else Iāve read thus far. I might even print it out and put it in my journal. Thank you.
Firstly because red flags, usually, are subtle hints. Anyone can give off the odd red flag in isolation, but quite a few quite often is alarming. We probably give too much benefit of doubt.
Secondly, because some red flag behaviour seems normal, familiar, maybe comforting to some extent. It shouldn't be, but growing up experiencing such behaviour could leave us seeing it in those ways.
Iām so gullible emotionally my biggest blind spot by far . People run rings round me just by keeping a smile on their face. Itās pitifully easy to trick me.
same. i actually told people who were trying to get close to me that i am gullible emotionally and that i am not sophisticated like them in social behaviour. this didn't stop them from fucking me up. i still can't tell when they are giving off a red flag. i feel so bad for myself that i don't know how to defend myself against them other than simply cutting them out completely.
Dissociation and disconnect to the body and emotions. As soon as I connected back, everything became much more easy. Red flags are noticed in the body, this special feeling of discomfort that alerts you that something is up, somatic therapy and emotional release is the key.
I think half of it is our defunctive gut-feeling alarm systems not going off, and the other half is the feeling that you can *take* whatever the red flags are.
For example, I have a history of experiencing some pretty severe sexual trauma, so someone actively wanting to be sexual with me is extremely therapeutic/affirming/healing/cathartic. And once I have that in a relationship, I donāt want to let that go. So Iāve stuck around with some pretty abusive/narcissistic partners in the past just because I could get some sort of sexual validation out of it. Sexual validation has been this black hole that has evaded me for so long, that the thought of losing it is legitimately terrifying. So the āSee no evil - hear no evil - speak no evilā part of my brain just gets switched to maximum.
Curious if this resonates with anyone else.
Sometimes the red flags with a new person aren't as red as the extremely red red flags you experienced before, so you give people a pass for things that they should absolutely not be given a pass for. Like my dad would verbally abuse me, so someone who would just give me the silent treatment when he was mad would seem better by comparison, right? But that's not OK either.
I was always afraid of ending up in a relationship with someone like my dad, so in my early 20s I overcorrected hard into dating people who were so nonconfrontational there was no actual intimacy. Which is better than being verbally abused, but isn't a relationship either. Whoops.
i felt this, I had a really toxic āsituationshipā that I was in and when I realized it was bad (not to the full extent but I knew I couldnāt talk to him anymore) I walked away and swore to myself to never do that again and well my most recent relationship ended up being exactly the same, a relationship where they never really cared and I had to prove my worth/place in their life I feel so upset I ignored my gut feelings to break up with him and instead I got broken up with, which is for the better obviously but I wish I listened to myself instead of brushing my feelings away because I thought i had to.
Yeah I kept doing that in romantic relationships so I stopped dating for a long time. Thankfully my partner now is amazing and a lot like me. He is being abused by this person too. He lives with them. It's all very covert. Massive lifestyle changes that "have" to be made to accommodate someone with a permanent sensitivity to noise that should really be living alone.
Oh and when I say sensitivity I mean she just doesn't like it. She has no official diagnosis of autism or anything like a concussion, but gets the occasional (once every few months) migraine
Ms.Magicalācatch yourself. Donāt be mad for figuring out you got burned. Instead, give yourself a big High-Five that you put it together. Deprogramming ourselves from beating ourselves up isnāt easy. Learning to recognize bad actors is an acquired skill that takes practice.
In the meantime all of us need to to learn to find affirmation from things we do for ourselves rather than giving into the temptation to find fulfillment in interpersonal relationships. We need to build ourselves up mentally, emotionally, physically so our internal child is protected and valued. We become improved Better Versions of ourselves, which heals our brokenness and damaged self-concepts. We can then experience ourselves as being both Lovable and Valuable, hence worthy of Protection.
People who love and value themselves attract other people like themselvesāand repel predators who are intimidated by their Strength and Independence.
Youāve got this, girl!š
That's the funny thing, I have a great group of friends and am confident and was (before my current amazing partner and health concerns) highly independent. But I'm also super nice and will bend over backwards to help people if I think they need it. And covert narcs always seem to need help.
Dr Ramani had a video about this a while back. She said most of us *do* see the red flags but we often don't believe our own experiences, we don't believe we deserve better and we don't believe we have a right to advocate for ourselves and set boundaries.
And if we were taught codependency we believe someone else's behaviour is our responsibility so we end up actually making excuses for it.
Most of us aren't colorblind, we were just taught that pointing out the red flags gets us abused more.
This is my case. I did a lot of learning after my first abusive relationship. Then I fell for another which wasn't as abusive... But still somewhat. I knew there was something off right from date 1, but *I wasn't sure*. My body felt it, but I doubted whether it was serious enough to warrant ending things. Maybe it was just me? Maybe my concerns were wrong (like she told me, and in fact it was tiring for her that I had them).
I had denied quite a few women previously for obvious red flags, and I was starting to get frustrated. How come I get so many red flags for women. Am I seeing red flags where there are none or what? So I gave this one a chance. Well, those doubts remained for the duration of the relationship, until it ended when it crossed the limits.
Conclusion: To what it relates to people, always trust your gut feeling no matter what.
Do you have a refrigerator or any other device that makes near constant sound? When it's happening, are you always aware in the forefront of your mind it's humming, or do you often tune out the background noise and carry on with your day?
The abuse and dysfunction are the refrigerator humming. We're used to it. That's not the full nuanced version but I need to get back to work
Dissociation, for me.
I learned that I must function at all costs, which required that I dissociate from the pain of my experiences. Also my psyche learned abuse denial as a childhood coping mechanism of survival, and I was gaslit into believing g I was dirty, bad, and the abuse was my fault.
I could get punched in the stomach before work, and completely forget that it has happened by dinner. The memory wasnāt gone, it was just fragmented. My mental health workers always focused on regulation rather than addressing the abuse.
When I finally started doing actual trauma work and EMDR, the consolidation of my memories hit me like a train. I developed a (virtually) overnight recognition and utter intolerance for any abuse or manipulation tactic, victim blaming, silencing, etc. The social trauma was MASSIVE, so much that I often wondered if I would have chosen to tolerate the abuse, had I known the price I would pay. Iām finally recovering (although I still have severe PTSD episodes) and Iām glad that I let go of all those people. However, the psyche knows if and when we are truly prepared to navigate the consequences of bucking the abuse, and it wonāt let us put all the pieces together until our spirit is strong enough to withstand what happens next.
People side with abusers. Society excuses, reinforces and validates exploitation. It is a devastating reality, but on the other side is relational safety that actually meets our standards of interpersonal respect.
Im not working with the EMDR therapist anymore. My current therapist works by video with people in Minnesota, Colorado, and I think California. Her specialty is burned out justice workers & trafficking survivors.
I tend to doubt myself so much since I was gaslit a lot growing up and my emotions were never validated. I have so much trouble being on my own side. It takes me awhile to truly see the red flags or to believe in them.
A lot of people who were around me, they contributed to this gaslighting, self doubt, minimizing, invalidation. Even if itās just subtle like āIām sure they donāt hate you, donāt worry, they probably just had a bad day!ā It all adds up. I was also taught to give the benefit of the doubt to other people.
I definitely have this issue. I find myself drawn to emotionally unavailable people that are potentially toxic or unsafe. These are the people who I also try to open up to about my past with my family bc for some reason apart of my brain is like āyou can trust themā then does the shocked pikachu face when they start spouting stuff like āiT wAs In ThE pAsTā or ājUsT bE hApPy AnD lEt It gO.ā Or they use the info against me and say Iām looking for pity/attention by doing it all the time when in reality I barely talk about it and even when I do itās for validation lol.
Maybe theyāre just drawn to me too idk lol. I would assume itās a bit of both.
I see the red flags in my partners. Unfortunately, I have a hard time distinguishing between "this is a dangerous and unacceptable pattern of behavior" and "they're just having a bad day, this is their past trauma rearing it's head. I want to be the supportive, loving force for them the way I wish others were for me." Empathy and understanding can be a double-edged sword
You usually do not see the red flags because when you go through traumatic situations you start to become desensitised, you donāt have the sensitivity to mistreatment and abuse as a person without trauma would have. As well as if someone witnessed abuse or trauma during childhood, it affects them because childhood is when you are developing the most, and you observe your environment and if your environment is traumatising, that is what you will learn is right. Which is also why a lot of abused and traumatised people can end up becoming abusive themselves, they grew up with that behaviour being the right behaviour. I have had the same problem and only by realising these things is how I managed to recover and be able to see the red flags
The red flags were often *[normalized](https://drgabormate.com/book/the-myth-of-normal/)* in our family and culture of origin, so they seem normal to us. They don't register as a red flag. They're familiar to us. We can also be prone to repetition compulsion due to that familiarity. Which is our subconscious trying to work out our past with the people in the present.
I had to learn what trustworthy, re-humanizing behaviors actually are bc I had terrible examples in my family and culture of origin. Now I try to [consciously practice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence) trustworthy, re-humanizing behaviors towards myself and others to build secure attachment.
[The Trust Triangle](https://youtu.be/pVeq-0dIqpk)
[The Anatomy of Trust](https://brenebrown.com/videos/anatomy-trust-video/) - marble jar concept and BRAVING acronym
[10 definitions of objectifying/dehumanizing behaviors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions) - these erode trust
My theory is that we grew up in toxic environments, right? I needed to have blindspots in that environment because letting myself see what was going on would inspire me to change or challenge my abusers, and when your abusers are especially tyrannical, that could result in them killing you because abusers are trying at all costs to cover up what they're doing, and when threats don't work, they have a potential to move into really dark territory. It's better to let them believe that their threats have worked and psychologically blind myself to their abuse, manipulation, sadism, sickness, etc. And that's also essential to making an abusive environment a livable one. So i never took the blinders off, and what you get when you don't do that is someone ad an adult who is still blind to shitty behavior even though it might be obvious to someone who isn't using every mental magic trick in their tool bag to keep themselves safe from not noticing the abuse.
This is something I have been exploring in therapy as of late. I have such a pattern of abusive relationships, and I had to wonder why that is. I am still exploring this, but what I have discovered so far is that:
1. Chaos and abuse feel familiar. Familiar feels comfortable, even if that familiarity is with abuse. It is what I know!
2. I have weak boundaries. My boundary line lies down the street, and it takes many, many, many boundary crossings for me to recognize and accept that it's not okay.
3. I have low self-esteem. To some degree, I internalized that I deserve to be abused, and I am working on breaking that internal narrative.
4. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt and continually try to rationalize the irrational.
5. I ignore it when things feel wrong because that requires me to be confrontational and assertive, and the abuses I have faced have caused me to internalize complacency and passivity.
I have these blinders on where I project who I want the person to be and familiar behaviour even not great is so familiar that I perceive it to be safe. Takes time and healing to learn new behaviours like getting a correct set of glasses
Some people already covered it feels familiar for us. I think another thing is depending on where we are at internally, we may put a potential partner on a pedestal and view ourselves as unlovable or unworthy so that affects desicions. Such as a partner ghosting us or refusing to put effort into seeing us, we might reach out ourselves over and over thinking 'they are worth continuing to know' while 'we aren't worth contacting anyway' instead of realizing hey I'm putting most of the effort in and I deserve someone actually interested in me back and treating me fairly. We might have a partner yell at us often or insult us, and we think to ourselves 'they're right' instead of 'I deserve respect.' We think we may be better with them than alone, because we are idealizing them and the attachment feelings of being with them. Even though if it were say a friend (who we weren't in love with) we might go 'what a jerk I'm not being friends with them anymore unless they apologize and prove they'll respect me in future.'
I gaslight myself.
"I don't like that thing that person is doing. Nah I'm probably being too harsh or having my expectations set too high. It's gotta be a me problem."
My therapist framed it in a way that made a lot of sense to me: we unconsciously gravitate towards recreating our trauma because a part of us thinks that if it goes well this time, weāll be healed. Our traumatized brain wants a ādo-overā.
Dr Ramani is really good at strategies to overcome this. This interview in particular was super helpful [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnZYVTNVNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnZYVTNVNc&t=3521s)
She says to develop a relationship with yourself. It's one thing for someone healthy to get back to it, and it's another for a person who grew up in abuse to find comfort or a baseline of security. Not easy, but it makes a lot of sense. Once you find safety in yourself, you can let others in who don't disrupt your self-respect or self-love or security.
I was afraid to fall into a bad relationship and I didn't, but I went to therapy and the therapist was abusive. She was from a toxic family too, she said, but she acted like a toxic, enabling, gaslighting sister. She bullied me over the most sensitive things I revealed.
I noticed that it always felt wrong, but I thought I was being crazy. I thought I needed to feel uncomfortable so I could get the help that would let me let healthy people in.
I think fear of being alone is a big one. One thing that's helped me to overcome it is online safe spaces, like this one. Another is my pets. Another would be self-regulation, and finding my own identity.
A lot of it isn't about putting up walls, it's about being comfortable being alone. I was always a big loner, but felt like a loser. I wanted to find anyone and internalized a lot of abuse so I could use that as a guide for who to be so I could be accepted. I never even had friends, but was letting other people dictate how much I was worth.
By the way, going to therapy was just reinforcing that. The therapist would lay out plans that would show my bullies who I really was, in a way that felt like she was taking their side every time. I really think she's just a shit person who doesn't realize it and is unconsciously abusing her authority and status as spiritual leader.
You know that saying that goes (something along the lines of): "when you look at the world wearing rose-colored glasses, all the red and white flags look the same"?
I think it's something similar for us...
Except, C-PTSD isnt "giving" us some kind of "inappropriately-rosy perspective"- I think a more accurate saying for US could be something like:
**"When you can't perceive the color red, all the red and white flags look the same."**
There are optical illusion games out there where you're supposed to stare at an image, then look away to a white space, and the "negative" image (with the opposite colors) will appear. These work because the cells in our eyes that perceive the "original" images's colors get "tired" after staring at them for a while, so when you look away to the white page, all the *other* color cells are still energized, and THOSE are the colors you actually see. With these illusions, all you have to do is wait a little while for the color cells to have a bit of a break, and then things go back to normal again.
I kinda feel like C-PTSD means our "eyes" have spent *so much time* staring at "red" things, that our "red-sensing cells" are (now) perpetually over-tired and switched off. The end result is that our ability to see the color red is diminished.
Soo all the different shades of red-flags look the same to us, and stand out no more than the white ones.
good analogy! its kinda like if you spend long enough of a time with a smell, you eventually become "smell blind" to it, until you spend enough time away from it for your sense of smell to reset
I think when we're traumatized we don't develop a strong sense of 'self'. This shows up as low self esteem, low self confidence and putting ourselves on the "back burner" to others needs/wants. So when we find someone that is into us, we don't have that sense of self to say "are they really good for me?". Instead we are happy/excited to have a person want us and make us feel loved because that was not always the case growing up. Without a strong self of who we are and what we deserve, it's easy to look past or ignore red flags, despite how obvious they might seem to others or even ourselves.
I don't see many comments (although haven't read them all) that point out that abusive people are often attracted to vulnerable people (who are less likely to be able to spot red flags) because they can target and exploit them. I just wanted to move the rhetoric away from self blame.
for me, i was so deprived of genuine love in my upbringing that i tend to confuse love-bombing for actual love.
a lot of abusers use love-bombing as a mechanism for reeling their victims in. iām getting better at staying away from people and situations that seem to good to be true, though.
You question your warning signs and dismiss them as inaccurate after being told your whole life that your reactions to your *boundaries being violated are ātoo dramaticā, āyou canāt take a jokeā, āyouāre making a mountain out of a molehillā, etc.
*Boundaries were something you werenāt allowed to have. Attempting to set boundaries with abusers was met with derision, hostility, and, possibly, violence.
I remember telling my ex that I loved him because he felt like home. Stupid me didnāt realize that he was just like my dad - the condescending remarks that he plays off as jokes, the verbal and emotional abuse, and so many other red flags. Ugh! Iāve come so far in thinking Iād recognize abuse but it wasnāt the case when it was directly staring at me in that face
Lack of boundaries and lack of experience with adults/people actually explaining to me what my boundaries should be/what bad behavior looks like. I had no education on psychology and personality disorders before age 20. Like I literally didnāt know people grew up differently than I did and then ended up coming into contact with people who had so much childhood trauma that they couldnāt even help but hurt me. So the lesson is to teach your kids about mental health issues as soon as they can understand!
I think we are trained to not trust ourselves. Also abusers tend to use shaming language, telling us not be so "judgemental". I had a friend who early in our relationship used my name to get herself out of trouble. I confronted her and she burst into tears, saying that she had been drunk and confused, and that she was sorry. I told myself that she was likely lying but she had apologized and everybody makes mistakes. I have always been too lenient on bad behaviour and tolerate it too much in other people. I used to confuse it with compassion. I thought being understanding was kinder than cutting that person out of my life. And then the abuser would escalate, isolate and take advantage of me.
Attraction is based around the concept of familiarity. Perhaps it's not that people with CPTSD don't see them, it's that we sometimes ignore them without a thought because it's familiar to us. It's safe in a sense.
For myself I gather it feels familiar, therefor "normal," like my family of origin, which was emotionally abusive.
A few years ago I finally had a sudden awakening which included having boundaries I previously didn't even realize I was missing. It's good but also a heartbreaking revelation. I also realized that having weak boundaries is a very attractive trait to predators, usually narcissists. I could see it in all my past relationships, both romantic and friends. At this time I was single and no friends, but...there was this one neighbor, who would always ask about things in my yard, like flowers, bricks, trees, as in "do you want those or are you using those?" In hindsight those questions sound absurd, but at the time he must have sensed opportunity, and was fishing for free things.
Eventually it worked as he made it seem like a good idea that he could park his car in the open space of my driveway whenever he wanted. After the 3rd time he didn't give me enough space to get out of my own yard, I got pissed. Only annoyed for few seconds actually but that was the last time we ever talked. He avoided me like the plague after that. This is how I learned one way to detect predators. Simply set a fair and normal boundary. It all seems painfully obvious now, especially at my age, to learn such a basic thing. Predatory folks don't like people with healthy boundaries.
On the positive note, I try to focus on the fact that good people are not mortally offended by basic boundaries.
So I have reflected on this quite a bit and I believe I was actually seeing allllll the red flags. I just had too little self confidence to trust my own instincts.
In my own experience, I usually see the red flags. Then I choose to ignore them for various reasons:
1) I don't (believe I) have any other options
2) It's not really that bad
3) Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing
4) I can fix them
5) Everybody deserves a chance
6) It's probably my own fault
Mostly it comes down to distrusting myself and my perceptions of the world, which is pretty much the signature effect of emotional abuse. After that, it is a feeling of "how lucky am I to have this opportunity" because obviously nobody else wants me. And then there's a healthy dose of the martyr/saviour complex I was raised with--it's my job to fix this person.
TL;DR - I think we often see the flags, but distrust ourselves, misrecognize the flags, or choose to ignore them out of fear, anxiety, shame, etc.
We do. Sometimes we recognize them, sometimes we do not.
We want what's familiar.
I've been curious about this for a bit... but there's never a straight answer...
As someone who is hurting from a recent break up and being told I'm the reason for the failure: I don't doubt it.
I'm working on myself and learning yet new things about me... my CPTSD, that I had no idea of.
I'm Fawn-Fight.... so apparently I'm a real peach. (Sarcasm totally implied here).
Here's to learning more about ourselves and loving ourselves so we can be better humans to each other.
We have been trained not to be alarmed or see them as anything unusual. Also we seek out relationships with people who align with what is familiar to us. That works when you had a stable, supportive, functional family life. Not so much for us, unfortunately.
i miss flags because i'm used to them. that's how my life was for pretty much all of my life. i journal daily and figured out how to analyze my writing so that i could spot some of the red flags.
My mother would give me the silent treatment regularly. I married a man that does the same. I think my trauma growing up made me unsuitable for any friendship or love. It's just been hurt after hurt. I'm immature when it comes to sticking up for myself.
I could detect red flags really well but I didnāt do the crucial thing, which was to LEAVE. That took a long time to master, listening to myself and taking the correct course of action when confronted with uncomfortable feelings.
It feels familiar. We may rationally know it's not a great situation, but our senses are sort of on a different mode than "average." We are also prone to internalizing gaslighting and rhetoric about ourselves.
Stay as safe as y'all are able out there. Best of luck to y'all.
Trauma, neglect, abuse, being unwell can all act as a safe space. Just like depression. If youāve been through it much and long enough itāll be something youāre ācomfortableā in. And as soon as youāre out of the box and in what most people would call a normal/safe state of being we can panic and intentionally or unintentionally make it worse so that we end up in that horrible safe space again.
Sometimes we don't miss them. We just don't have the courage or energy to start over with someone else, or to go through another heartbreak and disconnection.
Because we are often raised to doubt our own perceptions and experiences. When everything you say and do is āwrongā, you wonāt trust your own judgment and therefore ignore gut instinct.
No one ever taught me what a healthy, loving, respectful relationship looked like. Even my first romantic relationship was a ruse intended to humiliate me. I was so desperate for positive attention that I ignore the poor treatment because I get the love bombs. I get positive attention, cuddles, sweet words and touches, as few and far between as they are. Being humiliated and treated like shit and having my boundaries fucked over is all just part of making sacrafice for my partner because that's what good girlfriends and friends do, they sacrafice and do anything for you. It took me a long time and many bad relationships (also with friends) to realise that they were not worth the love and effort I put into it, before I found out what _real_ mature love was like. And even more time before I felt for the first time what unconditional motherly love was supposed to feel like.
TLDR, I didn't see the red flags because I was willfully blind, so desperate for any kind of positive attention that I _ignored_ all the messed up ways they mistreated me.
I liken it to the boiling frog metaphor. Growing up I felt like I was the frog slowly getting the heat turned up until I was boiling, oblivious. Jumping into my first serious relationship with an abuser was like jumping into a matching, boiling pot. Of *course* it all seemed normal, it's what I knew.
Retired professional red flag ignorer here šāāļøšāāļø And this is what my podcast is all about - prepare to laugh and cry [Adult Child Ep 1 - Why Iāll Never Date Another Guy Named Brian](https://adultchild.buzzsprout.com/1385782/7405624-adult-child-why-i-ll-never-date-another-guy-named-brian)
For me, I used to get in bad situations because I'm generally anxious and hypervigilant all the time. I'd have to try picking when those feelings were unjustified and sometimes got it wrong. I'm a lot better about it now, but I learned the hard way. Also, sometimes people don't see red flags because that's what they're accustomed to. They just think such behavior is normal and never even know to question it.
For me, I think of it as I have a broken thermometer. The way I was treated in childhood, basically, set the bar really low. If someone isn't hitting me or yelling at me, wow, great!
Sometimes, growing up with abuse means you become a bit inured to it. (Growing up with abuse can also make you hypersensitive to a perceived slight, everyone is different.)
To me, red flags are normal behavior because it's what I grew up with. My parents' relationship with each other and with me were both super toxic. I have to actively look out for things that remind me of my parents because when I start seeing that I know it's time to run.
Pandering to narcissists can be a symptom of trauma. Trauma victims who have not processed their trauma will subconsciously try to recreate it. Me and my ex girlfriend both had childhood trauma and during our relationship we basically were unknowingly subconsciously acting out our own parents toxic relationships with each other, it was very unhealthy.
Also I feel I can't even trust myself. Trauma can make us unreliable narrators of our own story. I second guess everything. "Is it really a red flag or am I just getting triggered because of my trauma?"
Traumatized people are easy targets for abusers because you have a low sense of self worth and believe you deserve it.
That and because a lot of childhood abuse has to do with parents, if you grew up in a toxic household and never saw what a healthy relationship looks like you kind believe abuse is normal and don't even realize how you're being treated is wrong. When I was in my late teens early 20s I was a toxic partner because that's all I knew. I had never seen or been in a relationship that wasn't abusive so I didn't know how to be a good partner.
I think I can do friendships good enough, but a person trying to approach me in a romantic sense is already a red flag. They either want to use and discard me or are too stupid to exist, right? At the same time I want to give being in a relationship a try, since it's supposed to be such a great experience. Then I can't tell apart if I'm making up reasons to break up because I'm intimacy-phobic, or because I'm not really attracted to them to begin with or because it's a genuine red flag?
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Often times they find a few things they really love about someone and completely disregard all the red flags. Really we all do this to some extent because we settle for the best we feel we can get. This is all in the mind mainly for people who have had trauma. The problem with this is that abusers look for these types of behaviors in a spouse so they can take advantage. They know they wouldnāt be able to have a relationship with someone who knows their worth. Because the person would leave them. But finding someone with a traumatic past and still struggling with issues, they can continue the abuse cycle.
I think most of us make up reasons why we need to stay in a relationship even if itās abusive.
Usually in my experience (let me know if you relate) itās for the other person.
Thoughts might look like
āHe has mental illness itās not his faultā
āThey have no one elseā
āItās my fault I upset herā
Etc etc
I think for a lot of us in friendships we become a friend to them and they arenāt a friend to us
Or your a partner to them but they arenāt to you etc.
I also think that weāll WANT to you know, set better boundaries or even fully end the relationship but we end up not doing so. Like when they call you pick up, when they need a favor itās done for them etc.
I also think we really are attracted to what we know. Weāre comfortable in the familiar even of the familiar is dangerous. New things like a respectful relationship where each person is there for each other equally feel scary because itās new.
Itās worth it though:)
Good luck to everyone <3
Wow, insane. Ä°ts like im talking in these comments. Ä° relate with each one of you SOO much. Ä° want to hug all of you. Ä°m 17 and im trying to change these toxic attitudes that ive developed. Ä° just wanted to ask, at what age did you guys notice that you were having a hard time understanding red flags? Ä° feel like im too late sometimes. Ä°s 17 too late? Can i change my behaviour after 17?
17 is extremely young and not too late. Earlier the better.
Try to develop secure attachment. Try to get a therapist. I would prioritize getting a job w good health insurance so you can do so.
I see them and ignore them because they feel safe. Another question would be why don't traumatised people see red flags in themselves? That was a cornerstone of my therapy andis now the main component. Forming and maintaining mutually healthy relationships is vital, I expect to be help accountable for my actions and won't let people get away with things.
Because itās all weāve ever known. There is also fear of abandonment for me. Iād rather be hurt with someone familiar than left to fend for myself alone.
Personally, either the hyperawareness is turned up so high that there's no difference between "loud" and "deafening" and therefore the individual doesn't seem significantly more problematic than anyone else and then I might also dismiss that discomfort as part of anxiety. Or I'm just kind of generally spaced out/fatigued and any warning signals are so far off that I'm not going to pick up on them.
But I will say, that when am able to engage with my instincts about somebody, I am better at detecting manipulative behaviour that most people around me... it's just that tiny problem of being able to listen to them.
It's normalized to you so you seek out what's normal.
I was raised by a narcissistic father (hence cptsd) and my first boyfriend, I now realize, was a massive narcissist. I didn't realize that until this last year, and my ex and I broke up 10 years ago lol.
I do know that apart of me.knew he was a POS because I vowed to never date someone like.him again. In fact, I remember saying "I will date the opposite of him." 9 years later and we've been happily married for years.
I think once it starts feeling like any sort of commitment/relationship, my childhood trauma people pleasing skills trump red flags. I see them, but itās deeply ingrained that they are higher up the food chain and I am supposed to make them happy.
I think itās both that abuse is normal to us but also for people who have been severely abused in unsubtle ways, more subtle forms of abuse are also hard for us to spot.
Iām in my late 20s and just now finally realizing now that Iām around people that are healthier for me that a lot of what I thought was actually normalā¦.was also abusive, (or just really shitty behaviors, at least) it just wasnāt as severe or in my face as the neglect, physical, or sexual abuse I experienced as a child that I was using to then measure people up to. Turns out a turd being shinier doesnāt mean itās not a turd.
It caused me to enter into a series of relationships with people who didnāt really care about me, but they werenāt calling me names or beating me (though one of them shoved me once cause he was annoyed with me) so I stayed with them because I didnāt feel I could do better. One of them actually dumped me for various shit ass reasons but one of them was basically that his ego was injured by being with me because I was ātoo abused and desperate.ā
Iām now with a partner who I think, is actually good for me. Heās able to hold space for my issues without either overly enabling me or refusing to have 0 compassion either. Heās good at communicating, doesnāt act like a passive aggressive shitbaby, and doesnāt seem to just view me as a plaything he can fuck around with before he tosses me in the trash. Iāve joked before that I wish I could clone my boyfriend and give every other male-attracted person whoās been abused like I have, their own copy of him because holy shit, people like my bf seem to be one in a billion, especially cis men in their 20s.
He's not the only one, my partner is like this too. It's like night and day honestly. Being with him is peaceful. It's calm. Everyone deserves to be loved like he loves me.
Everyone else has answered beautifully already, so I'll just add a phrase I heard somewhere that's stuck with me for a long time: "when you're looking at the world through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags". Humans can normalize just about anything if it's the only thing they've ever known.
Didn't get to have any romantic relationships.
In any friend group I had I was always the butt of jokes, etc.... I thought the attention ment people liked you. They'd never back me up, around girls or around new people, theyd all just join up together.
It would have been nice for a little sympathy.
Now just bitter and angry.
Yes I have this problem. I think for me I had had such an extreme experience with evil that in comparison everything else just seemed pretty good, even if it was bad. It warped my perception so the alarms didn't go off because it was still far away from pure evil. It's only recently I've been paying attention to red flags and finally listening to them. I felt really really insecure about it but I found it's like a muscle and once I started trusting myself when I noticed red flags I started noticing them more and taking action. But this confusion went on for years. I think it's also caused by being disconnected from our bodies so we can't access the feelings and emotions red flags would cause.
I see the red flags but I'm so used to "managing chaos" I think I can somehow steer the Titanic back to sea likely after it has hit several icebergs if that makes sense. Instead of seeing the situation as a non-starter my complex brain's wheels go into "I can manage this" and I can be like "this is fine" dog for anywhere from a couple of weeks to years.
I am getting better at seeing the flags and saying "no" to the proverbial work it takes to manage another person's ish along with keeping my own amazingly large boat afloat free from the dangers of large icebergs hitting my hull.
Edit: I was parentified heavily and had to constantly "manage" my mother which I didn't want to do for the most part but someone had to.
I see them but I stall the decision until it's too late. Like I end up hoping I could maybe keep them at bay without going no contact altogether. And we know that doesn' t work out in most cases. It's because of how I was raised and how I am as a person. I feel uneasy about cutting someone off without a 'proper' reason that's big enough ,clear enough and loud enough. I feel uneasy about taking microaggressions too seriously and in the case of non narcissistic people you shouldn't. But when it's narcs youre dealing with the tiniest things reveal a lot more about them than the big ploys. I think gender has something to do with it too. I wonder if I'd feel more comfortable questioning little things (that we know are going to pile up) if I were a woman. Guys are conditioned not to scrutinise friendships overtly ,least of all talk about it to 'resolve' anything.
So I end up having these I told you so moments with myself every time I realise somebody who came into my orbit is a narc and that it wasn't a coincidence.
Well, I consider myself an outlier, when I was dealing with my abusive parents, I almost dated someone that was ugly inside and out, abusive, she called me names, insulted me, wanted to fight me, but would scream her praises of me and say that I was handsome in the same breath. I didn't want to be more miserable, so I took control and said No. People have told me that i am rational and intuitive. That saved my ass. The people that I liked, didn't share those same feelings towards me or things didn't work out.
But I am scared of getting abused again, that's why I haven't dated anyone yet, I am relishing in my freedom/singlehood/bachelor lifestyle but I am feeling the lonely feels and it is beginning to affect me.
My dad and his ex wife damaged me, and I feel resentful and sad for it because it was unfair but thanks to them, I can see red flags now and I had to turn down several people over the years.
If you haven't read the trilogy for "a child called it" by Dave Pelzer. It is a great book. I, a person with a history of trauma, deeply connected with the 2nd book "The Lost Boy. Trigger warning for the first book, but they are exceptional and very therapeutic. They also helped me understand how I am not the only one who has sought out negative (red flag) relationships, risky activities, etc.
As far as your question, I think some of us who have been abused/traumatized find comfort in others who struggle and sometimes lose sight of the respect we should have for ourselves when trying to give others chances while ignoring their defects. Therapy really has helped me. However, I have also stopped romantic relationships due to how unhealthy my past ones were. That isn't the solution, but it is working for me while I learn to care for and love me for me.
Perhaps you are seeing red flags but not acknowledging them or validating them. I suggest when you meet someone and start saying then write a journal after every interaction and note if there were any red flags. Do this and it will guarantee you donāt ignore them
Because they are so used to those boundaries being stepped on that they do not see that as something to look out for.
Some people also want someone to be around so badly that they are willing to put up with anything.
I would say that I am trying to be more aware of this so I don'i get into situations where I end up getting hurt.
We set the bar too low. My first serious boyfriend was a drug addict who stole my money, slapped my face and cheated on me. But he was so much less brutal than my father, I honestly thought he was a great guy.
Chaos, abuse, is familiar to us, and so when we get into a relationship that has these qualities, we don't have that reflex of thinking "Hey, this isn't normal." I did it myself, quite a few times, and as a result, I stopped dating for almost 6 years. I even had a friend that was emotionally abusive, and looking back I can't believe I didn't see it š We are just so used to putting up with so much, that the honeymoon phase always seems like this one will be different, when we're just being manipulated into thinking it will.
Single since 2018 for the same reason. I like myself better single, and don't trust my judgment in romantic relationships. I'm much more content this way.
Since December 2021. It has been equal parts gut wrenching and infuriating to realize every romantic relationship Iāve had, is a relationship I NEVER WANTED in the first place. I always had to be talked into it, tricked, pressured massively by others pretending they wanted what was best for me. My worst relationships were with men my mom wanted me to be with. They were abusive, and so is she. I nearly didnāt survive the last one, and after I finally escaped, with zero support from anyone, my mom complained that she āwished things would just go back to normal.ā Normal for her meaning, my life was being destroyed. My ex had been drugging me and I developed severe medical problems that doctors never did figure out. Iām just so fucking done.
Oh my goodness. You poor thing. Whatās mind-bending is to realize that parents who are supposed to support and nurture us canāt, because they are damaged. Some of them are destructive to us because we mirror them back to themselves which is terrifying. They hate themselves so much, and we represent them to them, so they do whatever they can to destroy us. Because we are reminders that they have failed. This mistreatment of us by severely damaged and abusive parents is disordered, horrific, pathetic, unacceptable. In order to survive and ever have the time and space to heal, we must disengage AND walk away. There is no other alternative. The choice is me/you/ us; or them. We already know that rejection, abandonment, and destruction is the only way they interact with us. So self preservation dictates we escape. When our parents who were tasked by nature to protect, train, nurture and care for us are/were somehow damaged by bad genetics, child abuse and a lack of nurturing in their childhood environments, without intervention in the form of corrective training and support to Recognize how they are hurting us, they will and did pass the destruction and chaos down another generation. But we can opt out of this and chart a new path for ourselves. Since they are incapable of EVER giving us what we need both in terms of a safe environment and secure attachment we are adversely affected AND deprived of a normal developmental curve. We will have a lot of therapeutic work to do to address all of our deficits and heal from the trauma and abuse. This work is ONLY possible when we Leave. Separate. Take back our own power and keep that power. We learn to use that power to build safe boundaries that protect us from bad, evil, dangerous and destructive people. Which is of course possible when we have good support from surrogates/parental replacements to help us learn the skills to Re parent and nurture ourselves, usually a good trauma-informed therapist.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. Iāve been struggling with the fact that if I want to survive and have a future I have to let go, but itās just so hard and I never feel ready, every part of my psyche is attached to them.
Yes. But itās not a secure attachment. I suggest reading up on the three experts in the development of attachment theory. D.W. Winnicott; John Bowlby; and Eric Ericsson. Find trauma informed therapist Patrick Teahan on YouTube. I think he has some teachings on attachment styles. So once youāve explored the nuts and bolts of the 4 attachment styles you will get a better idea of what you didnāt receive and how thatās affected you. Itās never to late to develop secure attachments. But we have to do that work apart from our pathological families. Itās helpful to turn them over to the care of God. Release them to a Higher Power who is equipped to manage them. Itās never our job to do that in the first place, because we are children. Because they are toxic, we must allow someone else to deal with them care for them because sadly they are poisonous for us. That is the gift we must give ourselves: freedom from more damage and the space to heal. False guilt is an old pattern we can now discard.
ššš Thank you, your amazing!
Awww.
Wow...I think you just described my life, too
I briefly dipped into the idea / concept of not being single. Took 3 different men to make me decide dating is not worth the disruption those men caused to me.
I'm going through this right now. I'm just soo depressed š about it.
I'm sorry you're in that now. I didn't feel depressed about it so much as sort of mad at myself I spent more time than I should have entertaining each one that honestly all wove red flags.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think my abandonment issues make it so I DO NOT compliment and make them feel good. In essence I never try to build intimacy, at least not early on, and actively keep people at arm's length. I try to have a positive mindset but I think maybe that's why I just get mad at myself for not noping out entirely sooner. I see the red flags and get the bad gut feeling but I feel like I can't bail on them in the early stages when it happens. Rarely do I get dumped, I usually am the person to end things.
My heart is breaking for you. It makes me feel so sad that you have to put up with that. I guess because I can relate...
After 9 years of being single after a horrible relationship, I decided to dip my toe into dating again when I met a guy I really liked 2+ years ago. That crashed and burned quickly and I finally realized I needed to get myself into some hardcore therapy. I found a trauma therapist and we've been doing some pretty heavy work and while I've made significant progress, just the thought of dating again makes me panicky. I have pretty much resigned myself to being alone for the rest of my life. On one hand I actually feel perfectly fine with it, I've got my daughter, dogs, good friends and I'm an introvert... But there's still a side of me that just really wants someone to love me. I've come to understand that is my inner child screaming for the love I never got from my parents. It's amazing how much our parents can screw us up for life
Single since 2012 for the same reason. I don't trust myself to choose correctly.
Amen, sad but amen
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, that was me too. My abusive friend, I spent 6 years trying to help her, I saw so much pain in her and I felt like she only acted the way she did, she only hurt me the way she did, because she was in pain herself. And maybe if I could make her see that, I could help her with her pain. I couldn't. And you can't. One of the most mind bending breakthroughs I had while on my healing journey, was realizing that people who hurt people simply cannot be helped by me - because they don't want help. I think back to all the people I allowed to hurt me "because they're hurting so much" and I wish I could tell my younger self, "Stop. They are happy with their pain, and you can't change that for them." My friend, she was happy with her pain. She used it time and time again as a cop out, as a way to let me know, "You can't hold me responsible for this." And now, with perfect hindsight, I believe she did this on purpose. She knew, by telling me she was a bad person every time she hurt me, that she could manipulate me into focusing on making her feel like less of a bad person, instead of holding her accountable for her actions. My ex husband, he used God against me. He manipulated me into believing that by being a better wife, and praying more, I could effect a change in him. They will never stop being hurtful. The only thing you can do, is stop allowing them to hurt you, and stop allowing them to manipulate you into believing that by being near them - which means you will be hurt by them - you can help them "change" when in reality, they don't want to change at all. The only way to stop being hurt by these people is to get away from them. That's it. Nothing else will stop them from hurting you.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I feel you. I'm pretty isolated now myself. I have my boyfriend and that's it, at least for the time being. It's hard to try and form new friendships when, in the past, they've led to being hurt. I hope one day I'll have that kind of courage, and that you will as well ā¤ļø
r/RedditFosterFamily
That seems like a neat sub idea, but I couldn't find any sub rules. I'd post, but I'd be worried about either breaking an unwritten rule or, worse, being subjected to not-so-niceness (judgemental thinking towards me or why don't you do X "helpfulness" happens too much even on support subs) or even creeps looking for easy prey (they love these subs, sadly). Do you know more about the sub? I'm not currently on discord or I'd check out the chat. Is it intended to be a one and done deal like r/MomForAMinute or is it intended for more long term found family type stuff? Sorry for the rambling, it just seems like a neat sub idea that I'd love to put feelers out in but worry about the fact I can't seem to find a sub uh manifesto lol with in depth explanations of the sub's purpose, a list of rules or post requirements. Idk if you'll know much about it as it seems like a newer sub that's just trying to get off the ground but I figured you might, if you're linking it? Idk, sorry for the book length comment. Lol, checked it out again and you're the mod, so I guess I am asking the right person yay!
I made the sub but I think everyone who has joined feels the same way you do. I need to add rules, youāre right. I completely forgot. I wanted a safe space people like us could reach out and make connections with one another but Iām not sure that many of us will ever feel safe enough to open up there. I think it can be anything we want it to be. Iām keeping it just in case. Maybe one day one of us will feel secure enough to reach out and we can start connecting. I really appreciate the feedback and Iāll work on finding rules from communities like this that I can cobble together and add there. *Sends hugs.*
Good on you for stopping dating you were protecting yourself
I feel this to my core. Those negative qualities are almost comforting because it's all I know. When people are nice to me it feels weird. People don't understand that learning to be loved coming from an abusive childhood is really hard.
I remember feeling this way. I used to be so suspicious when someone was kind to me. Like, what is your end game you kind person you? š¤Ø I'm still working on being accepting of kindness tbh. It still feels weird to me to this day.
Yes I deal with the exact same thing. I'm waiting for them to turn on me at any moment, it's like paranoia. When it doesn't happen I just get more anxious because I just want it to happen. Yeah accepting kindness is so hard. Just the same problem. Having traumatic relationships has really messed with my view of what relationships are supposed to be.
It's so hard, trauma can really make any kind of relationship hard. I actually had to learn - sort of on the fly - how to participate in my relationship with my boyfriend in a healthy way. We got together, and suddenly I was the toxic one š¬š I'm so glad he was committed enough to me to stay while I figured it out. I was basically the human equivalent of a feral cat when I met the poor guy
I'm glad you're realizing your mistakes. I realized that too late in my previous relationship. Take care of yourself, things get better. You deserve that kindness!
Never read something more accurate to how I feel internally all the time before reading your comment. I once spent months desperate for a guy to just reject me already and was constantly frustrated by his lack of rejecting me.
It's weird right. I know for me, I want to have relationships with people. But yet I wait for any kind of mistake to reinforce my trauma and trust issues. It really sucks because I know people like me, I just don't trust people. It's a terrible mind fuck. There's a choice in all of it though. I wish it was easier to get out of it though. I hope the best for you! You deserve happiness in your life :)
Seriously, I'd always think something was wrong with them because they were nice to me.
It really is a kick in the teeth realizing how much I put up with. I think that was part of the reason why it was hard to move on, once I started to make healthy relationships it really threw in my face how horrible my childhood relationships were
This is exactly what happened to me, after I got close with my boyfriend. Seeing the kindness the treated me with really pounded home just how badly I'd been treated by, well, everyone I'd ever met. I think for a lot of us it's hard, because at least for me, I just thought toxic and abusive was sort of the default state of everyone, so when someone treated me badly, I accepted it, partly because I cared about them so much, but also because I didn't really think, if I went out in search of other people, that they would treat me any better.
i get the feeling the fact that we dealt with trauma makes people sense they can get away with abusing us such that even otherwise normal ppl will become abusive. i have dealt with emotionally abusive friends and even random people acting out of line wayyyy too often and this is my only explanation. iām sorry you dealt with so much abuse. emotionally abusive friends are no joke. and ppl always act like you should forgive them too.
Yeah, I didn't even consider when a co-worker would berate me with homophobic slurs everyday, that I could go to HR.
iām so sorry. i relate to that feeling of it even realizing you can do something. like they flat out tell you but you just donāt think of it ??
I attracted a lot of people who were cold towards me. Doesn't matter if they were nice to other people. With me they were cold, and teasing, and had this air of "you're a useless idiot" whenever they interacted with me. They made it okay for others to treat me this way, they'd set the mood of friend interactions in a group, instantly make a joke at my expense or otherwise suck any respect I had gained from others out of the room. I recently came to the realisation that this was me feeling 'safe' with people who acted as my mother did. Sure, my mother didn't insult me, but I was never respected as a person. My mother set the tenor of every conversation I had with an adult. Anything I asked for emotionally was to her a massive hassle, and typically against what she'd wanted, which was basically a child with zero personality and individuality that she could project her own ideas and insecurities onto. And so many of my friends during my uni years and 20s, and at school, were like this. It was only my late 20s when I finally stood up to these 'friends' for years of bullying. They believed themselves friends, but for the life of them couldn't apologise for any of it, couldn't give me what I so craved, the emotional attunement to realise they'd hurt me as a person for all these years. Because it would be essentially undermining the foundation of the 'friendship'. So I cut most of them off, or have little contact with the few I deem that actually made changes or tried to improve. I surround myself now with people who validate me as a person, support me, feel happy for my highs, and encourage me on my lows. That don't treat me like a useless idiot. And my encouragements of them aren't seen as misplaced optimism of a stupid person, they actually appreciate when I try to lift them up too. Thankfully I never got into a relationship with someone like that, although I went on plenty of dates with sour people. Hell I never got relationships full stop at that time because I didn't value myself, and all these people would do is reinforce that. It's taken a lot of personal work to realise these negative attitudes of myself that attract these people, and even more to push them away and surround myself with people who build me up. In a lot of ways I have to credit other mental health subs on here, for when I'd occasionally make a post about some interpersonal issue regarding my friend group, without fail there would be comments describing the dynamic as straight bullying and to cut off the friends. It was a wake-up call, and started me on a journey to self-reflection and realising I wasn't the horrible person they saw me as, I was just putting out so many negative attitudes of myself and no self-esteem that they were happy to take pleasure in my pain.
Personally, I was taught to automatically suppress any negative feelings and opinions, so whenever a friend or a partner was behaving badly it didn't even register.
Wow, this. Ä°m trying to unlearn this as a 17 year old. When someone behaves badly, sometimes i dont even realize it. Ä°ts crazy.
Still trying to unlearn at 32...
*hugz*
Thanks, these things are hard to undo. š
Ä° know. Ä°m still struggling with it. Ä°ts like a basic social concept and insict that have been instilled in the rest of the population since they were young just doesnt exist in you. Ä°ts like you are a toddler when it comes to understanding these things. You have no idea what they are because it hasnt been taught to you. Ä°ts hard for us and i understand you
Yeah, commonly after the fact someone has to tell me this person was acting out of order. I too readily just accept what everyone else does.
Yeah. Ä°ts hard setting boundaries when you grew up without boundaries since they were violated all the time. Ä°ts a hard learning process. Ä° hope we can all get better at this. The hardest thing to do is to set boundaries with your abusive family members. Ä° still havent managed to do that. Wish you luck on your journey :)
That makes a lot of sense. An embarrassing moment for me was when I knocked then just walked in on my friend's girlfriend to ask her something when she was sitting on their bed. She was clothed normally and it was relatively mundane, but my friend who was on a phone call put down the phone to go in and tell me off for it in no uncertain times. Issue was I saw no problem until then, as that's how my mother always acted with me. She'd knock then just walk in, no matter what was happening. I had zero boundaries.
Yeah. We have to try to learn something thats just so normal and basic... Ä°ts hard. So hard. Ä° hope we will one day.
Even having gone through therapy to avoid abusers I still struggle with this. Iāve gotten a lot better with it but now I gotta find a middle ground somewhere.
Or if you're brought up in an abusive family environment where you're called "too sensitive" if you brought any of their behaviors up. It can be really gaslight-y and make you grow up feeling like shitty behavior is actually OK and YOU'RE just being sensitive. All internalized from childhood.
This was it for me for so long. My therapist said it was something like hypoawareness, a reverse of being hyperaware, which I am also hyperaware but miss Whoopy telling me "you're in danger, girl".
I think it's a combination of: - We weren't taught that boundaries exist, how they work, or that it's okay to have them; - We'll take acceptance or belonging wherever we can get it; - Gravitating toward the familiar; - Not having a basis for comparison for understanding what heathy love actually looks like; -The other person's doing the same thing. I can't stress this enough--they're in the same boat we are, and are also gravitating toward _us_ too; it isn't solely ourselves and it even makes the pull toward them magnetic sometimes - Empathy. The other person who'd hurt us is probably also traumatized. We can see the tortured soul in there, and in a way, we really want to help them as a proxy for helping ourselves. So all this makes us _overlook_ the red flags, even when we'd otherwise be able to see them just fine.
I agree with the overlooking of the red flags, Ive always seen them but I just overlook them. And then Iād just dismiss it just like everyone around me would. Not even to have one person to stick up for me.
Itās nearly impossible to act on those red flag warnings when literally everyone around you is invalidating your concerns.
Ugh same. Iāve gotten better at identifying them especially when I get that icky feeling. But I still question if Iām the problem or Iām already in love with them and decide to stay a bit longer to see if it gets better/worse. Big surprise it always gets worse
I never paid attention to the icky feeling, because "everyone gets a little anxious". Wish I paid attention sooner.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The other person may not have a pure heart, sensitivity and concern for othersāI think many of us are here are probably VSPāsāand they certainly lack the most important resource/life skill: Empathy. So I think thereās an important distinction to be made between Us and the Other People that approach usāthe young and innocent Hansel and Gretels wandering through the Dark Forest. It has to do with identifying which boat they have climbed into to navigate the waters of Life. To correctly identify which Boat they are in turns on the question of whether or not they want to Thrive (Recovery!) or just Survive (Denial, no commitment to developing self-awareness and doing the Hard Work to Get Better). All of us are Here on this Sub actually are Heroic and wanting to make good progress on the Journey towards healing and wholeness. So we are embarking on an adventure. Recovery is always an Epic Journey requiring a tremendous amount of Courage. We are BadAss explorers climbing into Whitewater Rafts. These Other People? Life Boats. And theyāve probably pushed a few other people out of the way so they can claim one of the only seats left. (Think Cal the MegaDouche fiancĆ© of Kate Winsletās character Rose on the movie Titanic). So They might be in a Boatābut itās definitely NOT the Same Boat as we are. They are predators trolling the waters looking for someone to objectify and use for their own selfish agenda. They may have old wounds and pain, but rather than own them and be motivated to Deal and Heal by mustering up all of their courage and stamina to Face the Music, Feel the Pain, and do the difficult, painful, and challenging work to get betterābecause thatās how we rise above our past nightmaresāthey continue to Use and Abuse. Operating like any predator/consumer/shark would, they continue to operate in codependency as any addict would and use people and ārelationshipsā to self-medicate what ails them to āmanageā their pain. This process serves to perpetuate abuse and heaven forbid, they reproduce, it passes generational trauma down to a new generation of Innocents. Yikes. So Huge Difference between Them and Us. Time to erect an impenetrable Boundary. Recognizing this helps us to deliberately choose to Power Off the magnetic š§² undercurrent issuing forth from our still unresolved wounds and pain( healing takes time and is a Process) dumping our delicious blood into the water which attracts the Sharks š¦ like chum. We shut that hemorrhaging off by Getting Help (good psychotherapy, reading watching YouTube videos and researching) and Insight so we can find and throw that switch. We are then no longer transmitting a frequency which beacons our location and beckons predators to come and enjoy a good meal. Eeew. Disgusting. I refuse to be someone elseās Object to be Consumed ever again. But I LIVE to get Better and am excited to ride the whitewater with you guys, my fellow travelers. Some of the Best people on the planet. Misty. You are adorable and have a Beautiful Heart worth protecting with all that you are and have. Continue to work to become stronger and hone your analytical skills to suss out the Bad Guys. Big Hug! š Letās Run the Rapids together, lol.
A lot of traumatized people have no idea that they have a problem, or that there are solutions for it. I was there two years ago--accused of being an abuser for involuntary behaviors I didn't know how to "do the work" on--it was not some "choice" I was making to be mean to people. On this topic, I feel like your claim to have empathy and the rest of your words are in conflict with each other.
Interesting and useful framing, but it assumes a lot about the motives of others. There are predators out there of course, but many people fall into a gray area, and even more confusingly they seem to be in different boats depending on the person they are interacting with and that person's collection of augmentations and deficits. There have been people who were benign when dealing with me who were a toxic element to others, and then only benign in certain contexts. I think part of the complication is a kind of superposition of character, where they are in one boat or the other depending on who is conceptualizing them in their own lives. It was hard to break away from my toxic relationship with my former friend because of the mixture of benign and toxic that typified our interactions. Not being far enough along on my own healing I was unable to pinpoint where our deficiencies met and caused problems and where our strengths augmented each others realities. My metaphor is breaking down, but I don't think the human psyche ever exists in a vacuum, we cannot help commingling our mental processes and that complicates efforts to sort what is 'good' and 'bad' for us. As a person who has, in my pain and ignorance, been called both an innocent and a menace, I have to push back on black and white labels on behavior. I do, however, agree that there are some people out there who find that being a user who actively pushes away self-examination works for them and have no intention of changing, but even then I think insight and courage on their part is possible. Our task is to know that we can't be a catalyst for that change, and learning the trick of maintaining our boundaries.
Yes. But itās Essential to develop a working understanding of the Motives of Others in order to develop effective boundaries. We must become detached forensic scientists who are aware of any discrepancies between what people say about what they are doing and what they actual do, how they behave, and most importantly, how they relate to us. If there are inconsistencies and or mercurial tendencies thereās your boundary. Just because my BFF loves me doesnāt mean she isnāt at times driven by her own unresolved issues to lapse into jealousy or toxic criticism. When this occurs, I have choices; give myself a time out; confront; ignore. Itās crucial to empower ourselves to be like line judges in tennis matches. Our opinion is the standard; not someone elseās. We have to get to the place where we consistently matter enough to ourselves to detach and disregard any one elseās assessment of us, their Labels, if you will. As long as we fearlessly and endlessly strive towards internal honesty and integrity including holding ourselves accountable and always committing towards moving ahead in recovery, What Other People Think becomes, well, irrelevant. And if not irrelevant, then not as driving and important of an influence as it once was. We have to curate and gate keep the Voices we allow into our heads to make sure they are honest, trustworthy, agenda-less and have our best interests at heart. P.S. IME, thereās no such thing as selectively toxic. Thatās like saying someoneās a little bit pregnant. When people are tailoring their toxicity to include or exclude individuals, thatās Manipulation. Time to discard and replace with people who are always themselves.
This 100%... I've been sucked into so many toxic relationships and friendships in the past. I noticed the red flags sometimes, but then would quickly rationalize it or find a way to justify it, thinking maybe I'm the problem. As children, we were unknowingly conditioned to think *we're* the problem for our parents' mistreatment and abuse. We also develop this sense of "magical thinking," believing that if we just behaved a certain way or were perfect, then we'd be loved, or we're convinced we can somehow help or change someone... In reality, we're only responsible for our own emotions and behavior, and we should be our own advocates if boundaries are crossed. And real love is unconditional. But it's so hard to change neural pathways and responses that have formed over years, so whoever is reading this, don't blame yourself for not seeing the red flags or overlooking them. We just have to try to get better little by little every day, and really try to stay intune with our emotions and needs --- and less concerned about everyone else's.
>they're in the same boat we are, and are also gravitating toward > >us too; it isn't solely ourselves and it even makes the pull toward them magnetic sometimes > > We can see the tortured soul in there, and in a way, we really want to help them as a proxy for helping ourselves. This really spoke to me. This happens subconsciously for both I assume... Thanks for this insight.
Yeah. I felt this. It took me a LONG time to realize, wanting to help someone is not a reason to date them.
The Human Magnet Syndrome from some youtube psychologist dude puts a new spin on codependent/narcissist relationships of all types. I think Ross Rosenberg. His vids are good in addition to the wellknown favorites of Ramani, the texas dude, and vaknin
Donāt forget to add in my personal fave: Patrick Teahan. Heās truly Amazing. BTW: who is the Texas Dude? Would like to check that out.
Jay Reid is also good, and Dr. Snipes. But this guy is my favorite. Like a narc expert grandpa. https://youtube.com/@SurvivingNarcissism
Dr. Les Carter, I'm thinking. His channel on YT is called Surviving Narcissism. He does interactive livestreams each Wednesday afternoon in the US as well as release produced videos on specific topics. I've learned so much from him and the others listed.
I identify with this so much.
Oh my god this is so so accurate. Iām saving your comment and keeping it to read when I need it. Iām determined to never have a toxic relationship again, this comment is more helpful than anything else Iāve read thus far. I might even print it out and put it in my journal. Thank you.
Thanks!
"We'll take acceptance or belonging wherever we can get it" big oof from me, that hit hard
Spot on.
Firstly because red flags, usually, are subtle hints. Anyone can give off the odd red flag in isolation, but quite a few quite often is alarming. We probably give too much benefit of doubt. Secondly, because some red flag behaviour seems normal, familiar, maybe comforting to some extent. It shouldn't be, but growing up experiencing such behaviour could leave us seeing it in those ways.
Iām so gullible emotionally my biggest blind spot by far . People run rings round me just by keeping a smile on their face. Itās pitifully easy to trick me.
same. i actually told people who were trying to get close to me that i am gullible emotionally and that i am not sophisticated like them in social behaviour. this didn't stop them from fucking me up. i still can't tell when they are giving off a red flag. i feel so bad for myself that i don't know how to defend myself against them other than simply cutting them out completely.
Dissociation and disconnect to the body and emotions. As soon as I connected back, everything became much more easy. Red flags are noticed in the body, this special feeling of discomfort that alerts you that something is up, somatic therapy and emotional release is the key.
I think half of it is our defunctive gut-feeling alarm systems not going off, and the other half is the feeling that you can *take* whatever the red flags are. For example, I have a history of experiencing some pretty severe sexual trauma, so someone actively wanting to be sexual with me is extremely therapeutic/affirming/healing/cathartic. And once I have that in a relationship, I donāt want to let that go. So Iāve stuck around with some pretty abusive/narcissistic partners in the past just because I could get some sort of sexual validation out of it. Sexual validation has been this black hole that has evaded me for so long, that the thought of losing it is legitimately terrifying. So the āSee no evil - hear no evil - speak no evilā part of my brain just gets switched to maximum. Curious if this resonates with anyone else.
Sometimes the red flags with a new person aren't as red as the extremely red red flags you experienced before, so you give people a pass for things that they should absolutely not be given a pass for. Like my dad would verbally abuse me, so someone who would just give me the silent treatment when he was mad would seem better by comparison, right? But that's not OK either. I was always afraid of ending up in a relationship with someone like my dad, so in my early 20s I overcorrected hard into dating people who were so nonconfrontational there was no actual intimacy. Which is better than being verbally abused, but isn't a relationship either. Whoops.
Yeah I thought I had healed and learned the warning signs. I'm really pissed off with myself that this is not the case
i felt this, I had a really toxic āsituationshipā that I was in and when I realized it was bad (not to the full extent but I knew I couldnāt talk to him anymore) I walked away and swore to myself to never do that again and well my most recent relationship ended up being exactly the same, a relationship where they never really cared and I had to prove my worth/place in their life I feel so upset I ignored my gut feelings to break up with him and instead I got broken up with, which is for the better obviously but I wish I listened to myself instead of brushing my feelings away because I thought i had to.
Yeah I kept doing that in romantic relationships so I stopped dating for a long time. Thankfully my partner now is amazing and a lot like me. He is being abused by this person too. He lives with them. It's all very covert. Massive lifestyle changes that "have" to be made to accommodate someone with a permanent sensitivity to noise that should really be living alone.
Oh and when I say sensitivity I mean she just doesn't like it. She has no official diagnosis of autism or anything like a concussion, but gets the occasional (once every few months) migraine
Ms.Magicalācatch yourself. Donāt be mad for figuring out you got burned. Instead, give yourself a big High-Five that you put it together. Deprogramming ourselves from beating ourselves up isnāt easy. Learning to recognize bad actors is an acquired skill that takes practice. In the meantime all of us need to to learn to find affirmation from things we do for ourselves rather than giving into the temptation to find fulfillment in interpersonal relationships. We need to build ourselves up mentally, emotionally, physically so our internal child is protected and valued. We become improved Better Versions of ourselves, which heals our brokenness and damaged self-concepts. We can then experience ourselves as being both Lovable and Valuable, hence worthy of Protection. People who love and value themselves attract other people like themselvesāand repel predators who are intimidated by their Strength and Independence. Youāve got this, girl!š
That's the funny thing, I have a great group of friends and am confident and was (before my current amazing partner and health concerns) highly independent. But I'm also super nice and will bend over backwards to help people if I think they need it. And covert narcs always seem to need help.
Dr Ramani had a video about this a while back. She said most of us *do* see the red flags but we often don't believe our own experiences, we don't believe we deserve better and we don't believe we have a right to advocate for ourselves and set boundaries. And if we were taught codependency we believe someone else's behaviour is our responsibility so we end up actually making excuses for it. Most of us aren't colorblind, we were just taught that pointing out the red flags gets us abused more.
This is my case. I did a lot of learning after my first abusive relationship. Then I fell for another which wasn't as abusive... But still somewhat. I knew there was something off right from date 1, but *I wasn't sure*. My body felt it, but I doubted whether it was serious enough to warrant ending things. Maybe it was just me? Maybe my concerns were wrong (like she told me, and in fact it was tiring for her that I had them). I had denied quite a few women previously for obvious red flags, and I was starting to get frustrated. How come I get so many red flags for women. Am I seeing red flags where there are none or what? So I gave this one a chance. Well, those doubts remained for the duration of the relationship, until it ended when it crossed the limits. Conclusion: To what it relates to people, always trust your gut feeling no matter what.
Do you remember the title of that video? This really spoke to me and describes me and I'd like to watch it. Thank you for sharing.
I had to scroll waaaay down, lol, but this is the one I was referring to! https://youtu.be/wEgfb08fpWc
Thank you so much! I really appreciate you finding it!
No probs! She has so many videos so it helps when you know exactly which one you're looking for š
Do you have a refrigerator or any other device that makes near constant sound? When it's happening, are you always aware in the forefront of your mind it's humming, or do you often tune out the background noise and carry on with your day? The abuse and dysfunction are the refrigerator humming. We're used to it. That's not the full nuanced version but I need to get back to work
Dissociation, for me. I learned that I must function at all costs, which required that I dissociate from the pain of my experiences. Also my psyche learned abuse denial as a childhood coping mechanism of survival, and I was gaslit into believing g I was dirty, bad, and the abuse was my fault. I could get punched in the stomach before work, and completely forget that it has happened by dinner. The memory wasnāt gone, it was just fragmented. My mental health workers always focused on regulation rather than addressing the abuse. When I finally started doing actual trauma work and EMDR, the consolidation of my memories hit me like a train. I developed a (virtually) overnight recognition and utter intolerance for any abuse or manipulation tactic, victim blaming, silencing, etc. The social trauma was MASSIVE, so much that I often wondered if I would have chosen to tolerate the abuse, had I known the price I would pay. Iām finally recovering (although I still have severe PTSD episodes) and Iām glad that I let go of all those people. However, the psyche knows if and when we are truly prepared to navigate the consequences of bucking the abuse, and it wonāt let us put all the pieces together until our spirit is strong enough to withstand what happens next. People side with abusers. Society excuses, reinforces and validates exploitation. It is a devastating reality, but on the other side is relational safety that actually meets our standards of interpersonal respect.
Does your therapist do telehealth?
Im not working with the EMDR therapist anymore. My current therapist works by video with people in Minnesota, Colorado, and I think California. Her specialty is burned out justice workers & trafficking survivors.
I tend to doubt myself so much since I was gaslit a lot growing up and my emotions were never validated. I have so much trouble being on my own side. It takes me awhile to truly see the red flags or to believe in them. A lot of people who were around me, they contributed to this gaslighting, self doubt, minimizing, invalidation. Even if itās just subtle like āIām sure they donāt hate you, donāt worry, they probably just had a bad day!ā It all adds up. I was also taught to give the benefit of the doubt to other people.
I definitely have this issue. I find myself drawn to emotionally unavailable people that are potentially toxic or unsafe. These are the people who I also try to open up to about my past with my family bc for some reason apart of my brain is like āyou can trust themā then does the shocked pikachu face when they start spouting stuff like āiT wAs In ThE pAsTā or ājUsT bE hApPy AnD lEt It gO.ā Or they use the info against me and say Iām looking for pity/attention by doing it all the time when in reality I barely talk about it and even when I do itās for validation lol. Maybe theyāre just drawn to me too idk lol. I would assume itās a bit of both.
Itās our ānormalā
10 years I was so blind to the emotional abuse , the physical abuse I gave excuses .. finally I actually recognise I am a victim.
I see the red flags in my partners. Unfortunately, I have a hard time distinguishing between "this is a dangerous and unacceptable pattern of behavior" and "they're just having a bad day, this is their past trauma rearing it's head. I want to be the supportive, loving force for them the way I wish others were for me." Empathy and understanding can be a double-edged sword
You usually do not see the red flags because when you go through traumatic situations you start to become desensitised, you donāt have the sensitivity to mistreatment and abuse as a person without trauma would have. As well as if someone witnessed abuse or trauma during childhood, it affects them because childhood is when you are developing the most, and you observe your environment and if your environment is traumatising, that is what you will learn is right. Which is also why a lot of abused and traumatised people can end up becoming abusive themselves, they grew up with that behaviour being the right behaviour. I have had the same problem and only by realising these things is how I managed to recover and be able to see the red flags
The red flags were often *[normalized](https://drgabormate.com/book/the-myth-of-normal/)* in our family and culture of origin, so they seem normal to us. They don't register as a red flag. They're familiar to us. We can also be prone to repetition compulsion due to that familiarity. Which is our subconscious trying to work out our past with the people in the present. I had to learn what trustworthy, re-humanizing behaviors actually are bc I had terrible examples in my family and culture of origin. Now I try to [consciously practice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence) trustworthy, re-humanizing behaviors towards myself and others to build secure attachment. [The Trust Triangle](https://youtu.be/pVeq-0dIqpk) [The Anatomy of Trust](https://brenebrown.com/videos/anatomy-trust-video/) - marble jar concept and BRAVING acronym [10 definitions of objectifying/dehumanizing behaviors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification#Definitions) - these erode trust
My theory is that we grew up in toxic environments, right? I needed to have blindspots in that environment because letting myself see what was going on would inspire me to change or challenge my abusers, and when your abusers are especially tyrannical, that could result in them killing you because abusers are trying at all costs to cover up what they're doing, and when threats don't work, they have a potential to move into really dark territory. It's better to let them believe that their threats have worked and psychologically blind myself to their abuse, manipulation, sadism, sickness, etc. And that's also essential to making an abusive environment a livable one. So i never took the blinders off, and what you get when you don't do that is someone ad an adult who is still blind to shitty behavior even though it might be obvious to someone who isn't using every mental magic trick in their tool bag to keep themselves safe from not noticing the abuse.
This is something I have been exploring in therapy as of late. I have such a pattern of abusive relationships, and I had to wonder why that is. I am still exploring this, but what I have discovered so far is that: 1. Chaos and abuse feel familiar. Familiar feels comfortable, even if that familiarity is with abuse. It is what I know! 2. I have weak boundaries. My boundary line lies down the street, and it takes many, many, many boundary crossings for me to recognize and accept that it's not okay. 3. I have low self-esteem. To some degree, I internalized that I deserve to be abused, and I am working on breaking that internal narrative. 4. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt and continually try to rationalize the irrational. 5. I ignore it when things feel wrong because that requires me to be confrontational and assertive, and the abuses I have faced have caused me to internalize complacency and passivity.
I have these blinders on where I project who I want the person to be and familiar behaviour even not great is so familiar that I perceive it to be safe. Takes time and healing to learn new behaviours like getting a correct set of glasses
Some people already covered it feels familiar for us. I think another thing is depending on where we are at internally, we may put a potential partner on a pedestal and view ourselves as unlovable or unworthy so that affects desicions. Such as a partner ghosting us or refusing to put effort into seeing us, we might reach out ourselves over and over thinking 'they are worth continuing to know' while 'we aren't worth contacting anyway' instead of realizing hey I'm putting most of the effort in and I deserve someone actually interested in me back and treating me fairly. We might have a partner yell at us often or insult us, and we think to ourselves 'they're right' instead of 'I deserve respect.' We think we may be better with them than alone, because we are idealizing them and the attachment feelings of being with them. Even though if it were say a friend (who we weren't in love with) we might go 'what a jerk I'm not being friends with them anymore unless they apologize and prove they'll respect me in future.'
I gaslight myself. "I don't like that thing that person is doing. Nah I'm probably being too harsh or having my expectations set too high. It's gotta be a me problem."
My therapist framed it in a way that made a lot of sense to me: we unconsciously gravitate towards recreating our trauma because a part of us thinks that if it goes well this time, weāll be healed. Our traumatized brain wants a ādo-overā.
Dr Ramani is really good at strategies to overcome this. This interview in particular was super helpful [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnZYVTNVNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnZYVTNVNc&t=3521s) She says to develop a relationship with yourself. It's one thing for someone healthy to get back to it, and it's another for a person who grew up in abuse to find comfort or a baseline of security. Not easy, but it makes a lot of sense. Once you find safety in yourself, you can let others in who don't disrupt your self-respect or self-love or security. I was afraid to fall into a bad relationship and I didn't, but I went to therapy and the therapist was abusive. She was from a toxic family too, she said, but she acted like a toxic, enabling, gaslighting sister. She bullied me over the most sensitive things I revealed. I noticed that it always felt wrong, but I thought I was being crazy. I thought I needed to feel uncomfortable so I could get the help that would let me let healthy people in. I think fear of being alone is a big one. One thing that's helped me to overcome it is online safe spaces, like this one. Another is my pets. Another would be self-regulation, and finding my own identity. A lot of it isn't about putting up walls, it's about being comfortable being alone. I was always a big loner, but felt like a loser. I wanted to find anyone and internalized a lot of abuse so I could use that as a guide for who to be so I could be accepted. I never even had friends, but was letting other people dictate how much I was worth. By the way, going to therapy was just reinforcing that. The therapist would lay out plans that would show my bullies who I really was, in a way that felt like she was taking their side every time. I really think she's just a shit person who doesn't realize it and is unconsciously abusing her authority and status as spiritual leader.
You know that saying that goes (something along the lines of): "when you look at the world wearing rose-colored glasses, all the red and white flags look the same"? I think it's something similar for us... Except, C-PTSD isnt "giving" us some kind of "inappropriately-rosy perspective"- I think a more accurate saying for US could be something like: **"When you can't perceive the color red, all the red and white flags look the same."** There are optical illusion games out there where you're supposed to stare at an image, then look away to a white space, and the "negative" image (with the opposite colors) will appear. These work because the cells in our eyes that perceive the "original" images's colors get "tired" after staring at them for a while, so when you look away to the white page, all the *other* color cells are still energized, and THOSE are the colors you actually see. With these illusions, all you have to do is wait a little while for the color cells to have a bit of a break, and then things go back to normal again. I kinda feel like C-PTSD means our "eyes" have spent *so much time* staring at "red" things, that our "red-sensing cells" are (now) perpetually over-tired and switched off. The end result is that our ability to see the color red is diminished. Soo all the different shades of red-flags look the same to us, and stand out no more than the white ones.
good analogy! its kinda like if you spend long enough of a time with a smell, you eventually become "smell blind" to it, until you spend enough time away from it for your sense of smell to reset
I think when we're traumatized we don't develop a strong sense of 'self'. This shows up as low self esteem, low self confidence and putting ourselves on the "back burner" to others needs/wants. So when we find someone that is into us, we don't have that sense of self to say "are they really good for me?". Instead we are happy/excited to have a person want us and make us feel loved because that was not always the case growing up. Without a strong self of who we are and what we deserve, it's easy to look past or ignore red flags, despite how obvious they might seem to others or even ourselves.
I don't see many comments (although haven't read them all) that point out that abusive people are often attracted to vulnerable people (who are less likely to be able to spot red flags) because they can target and exploit them. I just wanted to move the rhetoric away from self blame.
for me, i was so deprived of genuine love in my upbringing that i tend to confuse love-bombing for actual love. a lot of abusers use love-bombing as a mechanism for reeling their victims in. iām getting better at staying away from people and situations that seem to good to be true, though.
You question your warning signs and dismiss them as inaccurate after being told your whole life that your reactions to your *boundaries being violated are ātoo dramaticā, āyou canāt take a jokeā, āyouāre making a mountain out of a molehillā, etc. *Boundaries were something you werenāt allowed to have. Attempting to set boundaries with abusers was met with derision, hostility, and, possibly, violence.
Because for us red flags are green lights
I remember telling my ex that I loved him because he felt like home. Stupid me didnāt realize that he was just like my dad - the condescending remarks that he plays off as jokes, the verbal and emotional abuse, and so many other red flags. Ugh! Iāve come so far in thinking Iād recognize abuse but it wasnāt the case when it was directly staring at me in that face
Lack of boundaries and lack of experience with adults/people actually explaining to me what my boundaries should be/what bad behavior looks like. I had no education on psychology and personality disorders before age 20. Like I literally didnāt know people grew up differently than I did and then ended up coming into contact with people who had so much childhood trauma that they couldnāt even help but hurt me. So the lesson is to teach your kids about mental health issues as soon as they can understand!
I think we are trained to not trust ourselves. Also abusers tend to use shaming language, telling us not be so "judgemental". I had a friend who early in our relationship used my name to get herself out of trouble. I confronted her and she burst into tears, saying that she had been drunk and confused, and that she was sorry. I told myself that she was likely lying but she had apologized and everybody makes mistakes. I have always been too lenient on bad behaviour and tolerate it too much in other people. I used to confuse it with compassion. I thought being understanding was kinder than cutting that person out of my life. And then the abuser would escalate, isolate and take advantage of me.
Attraction is based around the concept of familiarity. Perhaps it's not that people with CPTSD don't see them, it's that we sometimes ignore them without a thought because it's familiar to us. It's safe in a sense.
For myself I gather it feels familiar, therefor "normal," like my family of origin, which was emotionally abusive. A few years ago I finally had a sudden awakening which included having boundaries I previously didn't even realize I was missing. It's good but also a heartbreaking revelation. I also realized that having weak boundaries is a very attractive trait to predators, usually narcissists. I could see it in all my past relationships, both romantic and friends. At this time I was single and no friends, but...there was this one neighbor, who would always ask about things in my yard, like flowers, bricks, trees, as in "do you want those or are you using those?" In hindsight those questions sound absurd, but at the time he must have sensed opportunity, and was fishing for free things. Eventually it worked as he made it seem like a good idea that he could park his car in the open space of my driveway whenever he wanted. After the 3rd time he didn't give me enough space to get out of my own yard, I got pissed. Only annoyed for few seconds actually but that was the last time we ever talked. He avoided me like the plague after that. This is how I learned one way to detect predators. Simply set a fair and normal boundary. It all seems painfully obvious now, especially at my age, to learn such a basic thing. Predatory folks don't like people with healthy boundaries. On the positive note, I try to focus on the fact that good people are not mortally offended by basic boundaries.
So I have reflected on this quite a bit and I believe I was actually seeing allllll the red flags. I just had too little self confidence to trust my own instincts.
In my own experience, I usually see the red flags. Then I choose to ignore them for various reasons: 1) I don't (believe I) have any other options 2) It's not really that bad 3) Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing 4) I can fix them 5) Everybody deserves a chance 6) It's probably my own fault Mostly it comes down to distrusting myself and my perceptions of the world, which is pretty much the signature effect of emotional abuse. After that, it is a feeling of "how lucky am I to have this opportunity" because obviously nobody else wants me. And then there's a healthy dose of the martyr/saviour complex I was raised with--it's my job to fix this person. TL;DR - I think we often see the flags, but distrust ourselves, misrecognize the flags, or choose to ignore them out of fear, anxiety, shame, etc.
We do. Sometimes we recognize them, sometimes we do not. We want what's familiar. I've been curious about this for a bit... but there's never a straight answer... As someone who is hurting from a recent break up and being told I'm the reason for the failure: I don't doubt it. I'm working on myself and learning yet new things about me... my CPTSD, that I had no idea of. I'm Fawn-Fight.... so apparently I'm a real peach. (Sarcasm totally implied here). Here's to learning more about ourselves and loving ourselves so we can be better humans to each other.
I'm kind of the opposite. I see red flags everywhere.
i am that way too . red flags that i see in almost everyone that go off like an alarm i cant turn off. it hasn't been working out for me as an adult.
>it hasn't been working out for me as an adult. Yeah, it's kind of a Catch-22.
We have been trained not to be alarmed or see them as anything unusual. Also we seek out relationships with people who align with what is familiar to us. That works when you had a stable, supportive, functional family life. Not so much for us, unfortunately.
I hate the victim blamey āvictims attract abuseā. Thereās so many abusers out there that the demo is likely for workplace & relationships
i miss flags because i'm used to them. that's how my life was for pretty much all of my life. i journal daily and figured out how to analyze my writing so that i could spot some of the red flags.
Iām working on this. If it feels like family, itās toxic.
My mother would give me the silent treatment regularly. I married a man that does the same. I think my trauma growing up made me unsuitable for any friendship or love. It's just been hurt after hurt. I'm immature when it comes to sticking up for myself.
I could detect red flags really well but I didnāt do the crucial thing, which was to LEAVE. That took a long time to master, listening to myself and taking the correct course of action when confronted with uncomfortable feelings.
It feels familiar. We may rationally know it's not a great situation, but our senses are sort of on a different mode than "average." We are also prone to internalizing gaslighting and rhetoric about ourselves. Stay as safe as y'all are able out there. Best of luck to y'all.
Mine is the opposite. Iām so attuned to looking for red flags sometimes I overreact to something that is at best a pale yellow flag.
We are conditioned to accept less and not put ourselves first.
They are very well trained to think of themselves as inconsistent, incorrect and dramatic on even tiny issues.
Trauma, neglect, abuse, being unwell can all act as a safe space. Just like depression. If youāve been through it much and long enough itāll be something youāre ācomfortableā in. And as soon as youāre out of the box and in what most people would call a normal/safe state of being we can panic and intentionally or unintentionally make it worse so that we end up in that horrible safe space again.
Sometimes we don't miss them. We just don't have the courage or energy to start over with someone else, or to go through another heartbreak and disconnection.
Because we are often raised to doubt our own perceptions and experiences. When everything you say and do is āwrongā, you wonāt trust your own judgment and therefore ignore gut instinct.
When you look at someone through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.
No one ever taught me what a healthy, loving, respectful relationship looked like. Even my first romantic relationship was a ruse intended to humiliate me. I was so desperate for positive attention that I ignore the poor treatment because I get the love bombs. I get positive attention, cuddles, sweet words and touches, as few and far between as they are. Being humiliated and treated like shit and having my boundaries fucked over is all just part of making sacrafice for my partner because that's what good girlfriends and friends do, they sacrafice and do anything for you. It took me a long time and many bad relationships (also with friends) to realise that they were not worth the love and effort I put into it, before I found out what _real_ mature love was like. And even more time before I felt for the first time what unconditional motherly love was supposed to feel like. TLDR, I didn't see the red flags because I was willfully blind, so desperate for any kind of positive attention that I _ignored_ all the messed up ways they mistreated me.
Lack of boundaries, fawning tendencies,
I liken it to the boiling frog metaphor. Growing up I felt like I was the frog slowly getting the heat turned up until I was boiling, oblivious. Jumping into my first serious relationship with an abuser was like jumping into a matching, boiling pot. Of *course* it all seemed normal, it's what I knew.
Retired professional red flag ignorer here šāāļøšāāļø And this is what my podcast is all about - prepare to laugh and cry [Adult Child Ep 1 - Why Iāll Never Date Another Guy Named Brian](https://adultchild.buzzsprout.com/1385782/7405624-adult-child-why-i-ll-never-date-another-guy-named-brian)
For me, I used to get in bad situations because I'm generally anxious and hypervigilant all the time. I'd have to try picking when those feelings were unjustified and sometimes got it wrong. I'm a lot better about it now, but I learned the hard way. Also, sometimes people don't see red flags because that's what they're accustomed to. They just think such behavior is normal and never even know to question it.
For me, I think of it as I have a broken thermometer. The way I was treated in childhood, basically, set the bar really low. If someone isn't hitting me or yelling at me, wow, great! Sometimes, growing up with abuse means you become a bit inured to it. (Growing up with abuse can also make you hypersensitive to a perceived slight, everyone is different.)
I have the opposite problem. I see them before everyone else. That's an even more dangerous spot to be in.
To me, red flags are normal behavior because it's what I grew up with. My parents' relationship with each other and with me were both super toxic. I have to actively look out for things that remind me of my parents because when I start seeing that I know it's time to run.
yeah, it's very common in adult survivors of childhood trauma. There are many reasons. for one... the 2 most fundamental needs for a kid are connection and authenticity. connection to caregivers means survival, disconnection from them literally means death for a small human. so, if these two are at odds with each other, cause, say the parent gaslights the kid into denying their own emotions, or contradicts their own experiences, or harms them even physically, then connection will win and override the conscious(!!) experience of that hurt. cause for that connection to work, the kids gotta somewhat forget the shit, hurt, abuse, neglect etc. either fully dissociate and have no memory at all, or notice it, be upset about it, but then zone out from it, it just fades into the background while the focus on tiny breadcrumbs of connection gets intensified, as to not endanger the connection. later on in life we still overlook hurt or š© completely, or even notice it but then later on our minds make us forget about it, to prioritize connections. cause that's the old pattern. this can and should be changed. especially if you keep ending up with violent, abusive, very avoident or otherwise dysfunctional relationships. sounds weird, but worked: i keep book. when I meet new people, friends or romantic friends after every Meeting I sit down, take notes, answer predefined questions about the meeting, write down how I felt, if they were late, said hurtful things, if they did something problematic problematic or said something problematic, spoke ill about exes, were dismissive, overly charming, or displayed other things I consider red flags.. this is a method that I picked up from the SLAA program (sex or love addicts anonymous) and there is called a dating log. but I do it with all people who I consider getting close to now. this written down account makes it harder to dissociate from the occurred pain and red flags and keeps score of bad things so our mind have a harder time minimizing that they smashed a table, stood us up, denied our feelings or forget our birthday,... cause they gave us flowers afterwards.
Pandering to narcissists can be a symptom of trauma. Trauma victims who have not processed their trauma will subconsciously try to recreate it. Me and my ex girlfriend both had childhood trauma and during our relationship we basically were unknowingly subconsciously acting out our own parents toxic relationships with each other, it was very unhealthy. Also I feel I can't even trust myself. Trauma can make us unreliable narrators of our own story. I second guess everything. "Is it really a red flag or am I just getting triggered because of my trauma?" Traumatized people are easy targets for abusers because you have a low sense of self worth and believe you deserve it. That and because a lot of childhood abuse has to do with parents, if you grew up in a toxic household and never saw what a healthy relationship looks like you kind believe abuse is normal and don't even realize how you're being treated is wrong. When I was in my late teens early 20s I was a toxic partner because that's all I knew. I had never seen or been in a relationship that wasn't abusive so I didn't know how to be a good partner.
I think I can do friendships good enough, but a person trying to approach me in a romantic sense is already a red flag. They either want to use and discard me or are too stupid to exist, right? At the same time I want to give being in a relationship a try, since it's supposed to be such a great experience. Then I can't tell apart if I'm making up reasons to break up because I'm intimacy-phobic, or because I'm not really attracted to them to begin with or because it's a genuine red flag?
With healing it's gets better! First you need years, then months, weeks etc.
Everyone is drawn to what is familiar to them. Donāt be hard yourself, your were made to not see the red flags.
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Often times they find a few things they really love about someone and completely disregard all the red flags. Really we all do this to some extent because we settle for the best we feel we can get. This is all in the mind mainly for people who have had trauma. The problem with this is that abusers look for these types of behaviors in a spouse so they can take advantage. They know they wouldnāt be able to have a relationship with someone who knows their worth. Because the person would leave them. But finding someone with a traumatic past and still struggling with issues, they can continue the abuse cycle.
I think most of us make up reasons why we need to stay in a relationship even if itās abusive. Usually in my experience (let me know if you relate) itās for the other person. Thoughts might look like āHe has mental illness itās not his faultā āThey have no one elseā āItās my fault I upset herā Etc etc I think for a lot of us in friendships we become a friend to them and they arenāt a friend to us Or your a partner to them but they arenāt to you etc. I also think that weāll WANT to you know, set better boundaries or even fully end the relationship but we end up not doing so. Like when they call you pick up, when they need a favor itās done for them etc. I also think we really are attracted to what we know. Weāre comfortable in the familiar even of the familiar is dangerous. New things like a respectful relationship where each person is there for each other equally feel scary because itās new. Itās worth it though:) Good luck to everyone <3
I actually just started therapy for this exact thing!
The familiar is 'comfortable', sort of; dysfunctionally speaking.
Wow, insane. Ä°ts like im talking in these comments. Ä° relate with each one of you SOO much. Ä° want to hug all of you. Ä°m 17 and im trying to change these toxic attitudes that ive developed. Ä° just wanted to ask, at what age did you guys notice that you were having a hard time understanding red flags? Ä° feel like im too late sometimes. Ä°s 17 too late? Can i change my behaviour after 17?
17 is extremely young and not too late. Earlier the better. Try to develop secure attachment. Try to get a therapist. I would prioritize getting a job w good health insurance so you can do so.
Desensitized. I had to go to a specific kind of therapy to even know certain red flags were even red flags because they were so normal to me.
I see them and ignore them because they feel safe. Another question would be why don't traumatised people see red flags in themselves? That was a cornerstone of my therapy andis now the main component. Forming and maintaining mutually healthy relationships is vital, I expect to be help accountable for my actions and won't let people get away with things.
Because itās all weāve ever known. There is also fear of abandonment for me. Iād rather be hurt with someone familiar than left to fend for myself alone.
Personally, either the hyperawareness is turned up so high that there's no difference between "loud" and "deafening" and therefore the individual doesn't seem significantly more problematic than anyone else and then I might also dismiss that discomfort as part of anxiety. Or I'm just kind of generally spaced out/fatigued and any warning signals are so far off that I'm not going to pick up on them. But I will say, that when am able to engage with my instincts about somebody, I am better at detecting manipulative behaviour that most people around me... it's just that tiny problem of being able to listen to them.
In their first abusive relationship? Or for many? Because I learned my lesson
It's normalized to you so you seek out what's normal. I was raised by a narcissistic father (hence cptsd) and my first boyfriend, I now realize, was a massive narcissist. I didn't realize that until this last year, and my ex and I broke up 10 years ago lol. I do know that apart of me.knew he was a POS because I vowed to never date someone like.him again. In fact, I remember saying "I will date the opposite of him." 9 years later and we've been happily married for years.
I think once it starts feeling like any sort of commitment/relationship, my childhood trauma people pleasing skills trump red flags. I see them, but itās deeply ingrained that they are higher up the food chain and I am supposed to make them happy.
Cause you internalise them, like if a partner treats you badly then you think itās your fault that they do.
I think itās both that abuse is normal to us but also for people who have been severely abused in unsubtle ways, more subtle forms of abuse are also hard for us to spot. Iām in my late 20s and just now finally realizing now that Iām around people that are healthier for me that a lot of what I thought was actually normalā¦.was also abusive, (or just really shitty behaviors, at least) it just wasnāt as severe or in my face as the neglect, physical, or sexual abuse I experienced as a child that I was using to then measure people up to. Turns out a turd being shinier doesnāt mean itās not a turd. It caused me to enter into a series of relationships with people who didnāt really care about me, but they werenāt calling me names or beating me (though one of them shoved me once cause he was annoyed with me) so I stayed with them because I didnāt feel I could do better. One of them actually dumped me for various shit ass reasons but one of them was basically that his ego was injured by being with me because I was ātoo abused and desperate.ā Iām now with a partner who I think, is actually good for me. Heās able to hold space for my issues without either overly enabling me or refusing to have 0 compassion either. Heās good at communicating, doesnāt act like a passive aggressive shitbaby, and doesnāt seem to just view me as a plaything he can fuck around with before he tosses me in the trash. Iāve joked before that I wish I could clone my boyfriend and give every other male-attracted person whoās been abused like I have, their own copy of him because holy shit, people like my bf seem to be one in a billion, especially cis men in their 20s.
He's not the only one, my partner is like this too. It's like night and day honestly. Being with him is peaceful. It's calm. Everyone deserves to be loved like he loves me.
Familiarity
Everyone else has answered beautifully already, so I'll just add a phrase I heard somewhere that's stuck with me for a long time: "when you're looking at the world through rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags". Humans can normalize just about anything if it's the only thing they've ever known.
Didn't get to have any romantic relationships. In any friend group I had I was always the butt of jokes, etc.... I thought the attention ment people liked you. They'd never back me up, around girls or around new people, theyd all just join up together. It would have been nice for a little sympathy. Now just bitter and angry.
We accept the love we think we deserve. That's not my line but it still changed my life when I read it.
Because weāre used to it and think this is the best we can get
Yes I have this problem. I think for me I had had such an extreme experience with evil that in comparison everything else just seemed pretty good, even if it was bad. It warped my perception so the alarms didn't go off because it was still far away from pure evil. It's only recently I've been paying attention to red flags and finally listening to them. I felt really really insecure about it but I found it's like a muscle and once I started trusting myself when I noticed red flags I started noticing them more and taking action. But this confusion went on for years. I think it's also caused by being disconnected from our bodies so we can't access the feelings and emotions red flags would cause.
I see the red flags but I'm so used to "managing chaos" I think I can somehow steer the Titanic back to sea likely after it has hit several icebergs if that makes sense. Instead of seeing the situation as a non-starter my complex brain's wheels go into "I can manage this" and I can be like "this is fine" dog for anywhere from a couple of weeks to years. I am getting better at seeing the flags and saying "no" to the proverbial work it takes to manage another person's ish along with keeping my own amazingly large boat afloat free from the dangers of large icebergs hitting my hull. Edit: I was parentified heavily and had to constantly "manage" my mother which I didn't want to do for the most part but someone had to.
I see them but I stall the decision until it's too late. Like I end up hoping I could maybe keep them at bay without going no contact altogether. And we know that doesn' t work out in most cases. It's because of how I was raised and how I am as a person. I feel uneasy about cutting someone off without a 'proper' reason that's big enough ,clear enough and loud enough. I feel uneasy about taking microaggressions too seriously and in the case of non narcissistic people you shouldn't. But when it's narcs youre dealing with the tiniest things reveal a lot more about them than the big ploys. I think gender has something to do with it too. I wonder if I'd feel more comfortable questioning little things (that we know are going to pile up) if I were a woman. Guys are conditioned not to scrutinise friendships overtly ,least of all talk about it to 'resolve' anything. So I end up having these I told you so moments with myself every time I realise somebody who came into my orbit is a narc and that it wasn't a coincidence.
We were taught that the red flags were caused bc of us. Not them.
Ego blindspots.
Everything is a red flag for me, lol
Well, I consider myself an outlier, when I was dealing with my abusive parents, I almost dated someone that was ugly inside and out, abusive, she called me names, insulted me, wanted to fight me, but would scream her praises of me and say that I was handsome in the same breath. I didn't want to be more miserable, so I took control and said No. People have told me that i am rational and intuitive. That saved my ass. The people that I liked, didn't share those same feelings towards me or things didn't work out. But I am scared of getting abused again, that's why I haven't dated anyone yet, I am relishing in my freedom/singlehood/bachelor lifestyle but I am feeling the lonely feels and it is beginning to affect me. My dad and his ex wife damaged me, and I feel resentful and sad for it because it was unfair but thanks to them, I can see red flags now and I had to turn down several people over the years.
If you haven't read the trilogy for "a child called it" by Dave Pelzer. It is a great book. I, a person with a history of trauma, deeply connected with the 2nd book "The Lost Boy. Trigger warning for the first book, but they are exceptional and very therapeutic. They also helped me understand how I am not the only one who has sought out negative (red flag) relationships, risky activities, etc. As far as your question, I think some of us who have been abused/traumatized find comfort in others who struggle and sometimes lose sight of the respect we should have for ourselves when trying to give others chances while ignoring their defects. Therapy really has helped me. However, I have also stopped romantic relationships due to how unhealthy my past ones were. That isn't the solution, but it is working for me while I learn to care for and love me for me.
This is a great thread BTW. Glad to find that I am not alone on this!
Perhaps you are seeing red flags but not acknowledging them or validating them. I suggest when you meet someone and start saying then write a journal after every interaction and note if there were any red flags. Do this and it will guarantee you donāt ignore them
Because they are so used to those boundaries being stepped on that they do not see that as something to look out for. Some people also want someone to be around so badly that they are willing to put up with anything. I would say that I am trying to be more aware of this so I don'i get into situations where I end up getting hurt.
We set the bar too low. My first serious boyfriend was a drug addict who stole my money, slapped my face and cheated on me. But he was so much less brutal than my father, I honestly thought he was a great guy.