Love And Trauma

There comes a time in the healing journey of a trauma survivor, where they must learn how to differentiate. Though this sounds like an easy task, for a trauma survivor, it is not. Most have grown up in situations where mental, emotional or physical abuse were normal occurrences. This made our developing brains unable to understand the difference between love and our needs being met, and abuse. This is the reason why so many go in never ending cycles of abusive relationships, be it partners, friends, or working situations. They cannot tell the difference between abuse and love, they think it’s the same. It doesn’t really matter how much education they get on how abuse looks, and how many examples they relate to, because that neuro pathway was developed at a young age. When this is true, no matter how much we learn, those neural pathways take over our decision-making. These are subconscious processes in the brain, so they are not things that we can consciously control. Thinking positive or knowing all the signs is not going to change those neuro pathways. What will? Constant self-care and self-respect. If we don’t have these things and we don’t take our word to ourselves seriously, then our chances are slim. If we don’t follow through on the things that we tell ourselves we’re going to do, we will fall back into those old neuro pathways. We can use our conscious, waking brain to discipline us to follow through on tiny, manageable tasks until we are strong enough to tackle larger things. We can follow through on the small things we tell ourselves while also making a point to follow through on our basic self-care. This is one way of breaking those old neural pathways, and therefore breaking our subconscious brains free from our old association of abuse being the same as love.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Gordon Johnson