Hey there, it’s Kerri! Thank you so much for joining me on this latest episode of Invisible Wounds Healing from Trauma. This is episode 20 and we’re going to talk about why we seem to always make the wrong choices in relationships.

I’m so glad that we’re walking the path towards healing together!

So just a quick reminder, I’m not a clinician, counselor, or physician. I’m a Certified Trauma Support Specialist with lots of lived experience with trauma. Also, the information presented in this podcast is for educational purposes only and not meant to replace treatment by a doctor or any other licensed professional.

Alright let’s dive in!

So, over the last few episodes, we’ve talked about different types of relationships: Healthy, Unhealthy, and Abusive. For those of us with a trauma history, many of us keep making mistakes in our choices when it comes to any kind of relationship but especially when it comes to a romantic partner. We can repeat a pattern of choosing someone who is hurtful, damaging, or abusive to us. We wonder why we make these choices over and over again. We don’t understand why we pick a partner that hurts us, is abusive to us. We wonder why we can’t just find someone “nice”, and we lay the blame at our own feet. We can feel that the fault is ours and that there is something wrong with us. We don’t understand what keeps happening, what WE MUST be doing wrong!

First, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH US! As we’ve been learning, the choices we make in a romantic partner has everything to do with our history and experiences with trauma! If we were abused and neglected as a child, we may have no sense of self, no self-worth. Our first relationships with our parents or caregivers might have been unhealthy and dysfunctional. We never feel safe, we learn not to trust that these people will care for us. We might have lived in “survival mode” only, never knowing what was going to happen from one minute to the next! These first relationships are crucial to development across our lives in every way. If we have healthy parents or caregivers, we learn that our environment is a safe one, we trust them. This builds the foundation that all of our other relationships are built on. However, if we have dysfunctional, abusive, unsafe caregivers, our foundation is shaky at best! We have no idea who we are, what we want and DON’T want in relationships. We never had anyone who modeled what a good relationship even looks like for us.

As we grow up in dysfunctional, unsafe, or abusive environments, we aren’t taught boundaries. Boundaries are so important! They are those “lines” we draw for ourselves with others. They tell us what we will and will not accept regarding behaviors, actions, and attitudes from others. When we are raised in a healthy environment, we are nurtured, valued, respected, and we learn that our needs matter. We have a good sense of what the difference is between acceptable and unacceptable behavior from other people looks like. So, if someone comes into our lives and doesn’t treat us well or if they cross or violate our personal boundaries, we have the ability to walk away from that relationship. It doesn’t serve us or enhance our lives in any way. But if we have weak or no boundaries, we have no clue as to what is healthy regarding relationships. We might continually hang on to a relationship that isn’t good for us, refusing to let it go out of fear: fear of rejection, fear of being alone, fear that no one else will want us, fear of being physically, mentally, or emotionally hurt. We don’t understand why we aren’t ENOUGH! Somewhere in our minds, we convince ourselves that if we just love that person enough, do everything that want the way they want it, we can “love” their destructive behaviors away. I know that when I was in my abusive relationship, that’s what I thought. I just knew that my love, patience, care, and attention would work, it HAD to! I could “fix” him, make him better, right all of his wrongs! He needed me intensely it was almost a feeling you could “touch.” His intensity, desperation, neediness all fed something in me. Just like I had dome with my mother, it became my full-time job to keep him alive, make him better. That caregiver tendency in me came out in full force. He gave me just enough love at the right times to keep me “hooked.” Abusers know exactly how to play those cards by the way! They keep us totally off balance, we never know what’s going to happen, when it will happen, or what it will look like. We live for those “crumbs” of love and affection they give us.

Let me tell you, there is not enough love, care, patience, and attention that exists in anyone that can “fix” another person! We can’t “love” abusive behavior out of someone else! We can’t fix anyone else; they would have to address their own issues and fix themselves. Abusers don’t really feel that their behavior is wrong. They can hurt us and apologize, “admitting” that they were wrong, begging for our forgiveness, declaring their love for us, and promising they won’t hurt us again, but it’s a lie! It will happen again, over, and over. They do this to keep us hooked and under their control. They know exactly how to play on our feelings, our love for them. We do love them, there’s no denying that, even though they hurt us. We feel a desperate need to make it work, we have that fear of being alone. Over time, we can also experience something called “trauma bonding.” As abusers over time take away our support systems like family, friends, even our jobs then keep us isolated and under their control, we can begin to feel that we are completely dependent on THEM for our survival. We turn to them for comfort and emotional support, even though they are the ones that hurt us. We have no one else BUT them. We make excuses to others justifying their behavior, even agreeing with it. We can become angry or hostile when others try to step in to try and stop the abuse. Sounds twisted right? It is, but it’s a perfectly understandable response from someone who has no sense of “self” no identity of their own. Our relationships become entangled, enmeshed, we have no idea where we begin and end. Our identity and self-worth are defined by the other person. Their treatment of us, responses, crumbs of affection, comments, criticisms, blame, shaming, isolation, all serve to knock us down to our lowest self. Their treatment of us is the yardstick by which we measure ourselves. If they abuse us, are cruel, violent, or mean, we must have “deserved it” we did something wrong. They reinforce that feeling in us, saying things like “you made me do this” or “this is your fault.”  They tell us we are stupid, slow, ugly, fat, whatever words they use, they easily convince us that these are all true things about ourselves. And if we gather up the courage to leave, they pull out all of the stops to keep us from going. They can go from begging, pleading, declaring their undying love, to threatening to hurt or even kill us if we leave. Another common tactic is them saying that if we leave, they will kill themselves. They won’t do it, they are too selfish, self-important, and self-serving. Even if they by some miracle tried to hurt themselves, that is not under our control. Remember, we have absolutely NO CONTROL over another person! We have no control over what they do, say, or how they react and respond. We only have control over ourselves, what WE do, say, and how WE react and respond!

If you remember my episode 13 titled “My Swiss Cheese Theory of Trauma” I explain what happens to those of us who have traumatic histories. Trauma leaves us full of holes. Those holes represent all of the things we didn’t get growing up that we needed. We needed love, guidance, boundaries, respect, care, support, safety. We needed to learn that WE matter, our needs, wants, interests, opinions, everything about us was important! If we didn’t get those things, the holes those unmet needs leave in us are huge, wide-open spaces in our souls, ourselves. We hurt, we feel ‘less than,” we don’t feel that we deserve “good things” or “good people” in our lives. So, in our hurt and confusion, we try to fill up those holes in any way we can. It could be relationships, food, sex, substances, impulse buying (spending money we don’t have), self-harming behaviors, anything we can find. We do these things unconsciously; we don’t think about the deeper “why” of what we’re doing. However, it’s just a short-term fix to a long-term problem.  It’s like trying to put a band-aid on a huge open bleeding wound that really needs stitches. In the long run, we are really just hurting ourselves over and over again. We put on that band-aid and rip it off repeatedly, never treating the wound correctly and giving it a chance to heal. What we are doing is trying to plug up those holes from the outside in, but the only way to heal, to create real and lasting change, is to fill those holes up from the inside out. We have to start by healing ourselves first, doing the really messy, hard, painful work of giving ourselves those things that we didn’t get from others that we so desperately needed!

So, as we go through life, full of those holes, desperately looking to fill them up and stop the hurt, we are open and vulnerable to making the wrong choices in people to have romantic relationships with. With no boundaries, based on what our trauma histories have taught us about ourselves, we don’t believe we deserve better. We can have this almost desperate need to be loved, wanted, and needed. Particularly for those of us with a “caregiver” mentality (totally me!) we want to be able to do everything we can, whatever is in our power for someone we love. Is caring for, loving someone, and wanting to do things for another person that we love wrong? No, of course not. However, it should never come at a cost to our personal self,