Trauma survivors

 By Patrick Teahan

Many childhood trauma survivors wonder if they

willfully attract abusive people into their lives.

While it can look like that from the outside, I don't

believe we look at someone and say, "Yes...let's 

welcome this abusive person into our lives so they

can ruin it."

It doesn't work like that.

I think children who grow up in neglect and abuse

are modeled that their safety doesn't matter. So

many of us were left with perpetrators or exposed 

to them.

Just like in childhood, we dissociate when

someone says abuse is normal and okay.

Unfortunately, this pattern repeats in our

adulthood with difficult or abusive people. 

We are not focused on our safety because we

most likely don't know how to do that.

When parents do not:

• Model healthy boundaries
• Use good intuition about their child's safety
• Choose a child's safety over a perpetrator's feelings

the child grows up without the vital mechanism of self-preservation.

How can we know who is safe when the adults 

welcomed in danger? We need help getting

a radar system in place that should have been

there all along.

It's more like abusive people happen to us because

we don't think we have rights around our happiness

and safety.

This issue is also mixed with dissociation,

codependency in the form of not wanting to

rock the boat, and magical thinking.

We don't attract 

abusive people.

We grew up without

anyone being concerned

or aware of our safety.