CPTSD: Why You Cling to People Who Mistreat You

even when you knew when you knew that people were mistreating you have you ever responded with an attempt to completely change yourself into the person that you thought that they wanted like that is a childhood PTSD thing completely abandoning yourself to desperately please an abusive person is one of the most destructive adult symptoms of early trauma because when someone is abusing you now the last thing you need is to abandon yourself to basically deny your perception and give away all your power so what makes us do that and what does it look like today I'm answering a letter from a woman I'll call Layla and here's what she wrote hi Anna I'm going through a divorce after 10 difficult months of marriage with my ex-husband I saw red flags going into the marriage but I rushed and we got married in only three months because I was afraid to lose the opportunity to marry him I was worried he would change his mind I believe I have cptsd after growing up in a household with a highly critical mother and where affection was only granted if you did exactly what you were told to do doing anything different meant love was withdrawn my husband or now ex-husband was never appreciative of the effort I put into our marriage the things that hurt me didn't matter my opinions didn't matter and everything I did was wrong and got criticized he constantly said that he could do better than being with me that he deserves someone better since he's handsome and Young I didn't take this as a sign to leave I took it as a sign to do more okay I'm circling stuff because I'm going to come back and go through this letter after we go through it one time and talk about what you're saying here Layla after 10 months of marriage and six months of Separation where I tried to reconcile with him I committed to being more obedient more respectful more understanding and kinder to his family but he still wasn't satisfied I felt abandoned and unwanted and worthless to him so I wrote to Layla an email and just said could you clarify about this obedient thing that's kind of unusual and she said I practice Islam I don't wear a hijab but I do the five daily prayers Islam helps me find peace but it is very often used by some to manipulate others I love my faith and I would like to keep learning and practicing in a tolerant way that never makes others feel excluded my Islamic values come from my parents I learned Islam from them as a young child but they didn't force me to practice I decided to learn more about the faith on my own in University I was born and raised in Canada my ex grew up in the Middle East until he was 25. his family were quite judgmental and harsh with me for not practicing Islam the way they did in their culture women are expected to be obedient and quiet they were highly critical of me and even told me I don't belong in the Arabic community since I was not born in the Middle East I felt guilt and shame after this difficult marriage I still noticed myself wishing I had done something differently and said things differently and then maybe it would have worked out there were so many situations that I interpreted as abandonment my my ex-husband told me to pack a bag and leave the house and when I left I went to my parents house who then kicked me also out of the house because my mother was very angry that I wanted to work on my marriage and resolve things with him when I left my parents house I went to stay in a hotel for two weeks until they told me it was okay to come back I went back and again my mother kept threatening me and emotionally abusing me until it became physically abusive when she hit me I didn't care about my head and I didn't care that she hit me I felt like I deserved all the pain that everyone was putting me through I felt numb I left their house willingly and paid my brother to stay with him the divorce is finalized and my mother and I don't keep in such close contact I'm worried that I just stepped away from all the abuse but if I were to encounter another abusive situation I would be very I would very deeply believe I deserved it too can you please help me figure out how to heal from abandonment wounds and how to stop ruminating and judging myself for the mistakes I made that caused me to get kicked out of my ex-husband's house and by my parents thank you for your Insight okay Leila I am so sorry this is a horrible situation and the thing is I think as much as you're in pain I think you might not quite realize how just how badly people have treated you I'm not sure so I'm going to go back through the letter and let's see what we see here all right going through a divorce after 10 difficult months of marriage and the first thing you told me about this was that you rushed in and got married in only three months because you were afraid to lose the opportunity to marry him and you were worried he would change his mind so you told me this up front and I'm glad you did and what's interesting to me is that this didn't come up again but I know you know what happened here like what your part in this is you just tipped your hand you rushed in after three months because you were afraid he was going to leave and I know about trauma thinking when you told me down in the letter about your parents I could see a real pattern that it started when you were young and was showing up now all right but this fear that you had to hurry up and marry him as if that would work to make him love you and stay with you before he changed his mind that just there's so much sadness in that then you say I believe I have cptsd after growing up in a household with a highly critical mother and where affection was only granted if you did exactly what you were told to do so I can sure see how you got conditioned to do exactly what other people tell you to do and there's a time and a place for this but if it became like the whole way that you do life and that's the only way you've ever made anything go your way that would explain what happened in this marriage where you thought you could save the day by doing exactly what he told you to do so then you said that your ex-husband never appreciated the effort you put into the marriage you know Layla I have a feeling this had nothing to do with the effort you put into the marriage it sounds like he well let's just see what he says here uh things that hurt you didn't matter your opinions didn't matter everything you did was wrong and got criticized so what you're describing there is serious self-centeredness um I I can't diagnose somebody with narcissism but if somebody if a spouse doesn't matter and everything they do is wrong and gets criticized but they married you in three months it sure points to Me Like Somebody maybe kind of love bombed and then got disinterested and discarded that is what this looks like now he didn't write to me I don't know but what I do know is that it's emotionally abusive he constantly said that he could do better than being with me so you married a guy who just kept telling you during a 10-month marriage that he could do better than you because he's young and handsome all right Clues are pouring in now what this guy is about he can do better than you so it's a little puzzling to me if he thought that he that this was not a good match for him it's hard for me to understand why he married you um but that I don't have insight into that so just as well because I'm going to stay focused on you here's what happened with you when he said these horrible things that were kind of deal breaker things to say I didn't take this as a sign to leave I took it as a sign to do more all right I know that pattern so well when somebody mistreats you instead of leaving you think I can fix this I can do more I can you know rig the situation with my behavior and change myself and abandon myself and pretend I'm the person I imagine they want me to be and then they'll love me and I mean everybody has that ever worked it doesn't work you can probably delay somebody leaving a little bit or maybe keep them from directly abusing you in the moment but in the long run if a marriage isn't based on people loving each other and wanting to be there you got problems so that was there from the beginning and we're going to talk about why did you want to be there in a minute so then you said after 10 months of marriage and six months of Separation where I tried to reconcile with him I committed to being more obedient more respectful more understanding and Kinder alright so I'm just imagining when you two were fighting and he was saying he wasn't happy with you he was saying you're not obedient you're not respectful you're not understanding you're not kind to his family I don't know you but those could be adjectives that you would say when you were trying to control somebody and they were resistant to being controlled and you say he wasn't satisfied even though you tried to do these things you felt abandoned unwanted and worthless to him yeah that sounds pretty reasonable so then when I asked you about that in the letter like why were you trying to be more obedient then you explained that you practice Islam and you were trying to match his brand of Islam which is very traditional but you know what it's not traditional to marry somebody and then just tell them how awful they are and how you could do better that's not traditional at all I'm sure it's not Islam and it sounds like you have a um you don't wear a hijab you do do the prayer so you have a strong faith in spirituality you've found groundedness in this and you know you're saying you learned it from your parents and your parents were people who also devalued you and didn't give you any love unless you did exactly what they wanted so if if by contrast to his family your family is so nice that says so much about his family because what you said about your family the critical the criticism and then later the physical abuse it doesn't quite mesh with what you're telling me about their brand of faith and that their faith was inclusive and tolerant they weren't tolerant of you and they threw you out of the house they weren't inclusive of you this is so it's very painful letter and uh and I want to be gentle because it seems a little bit like it's so bad that you haven't quite faced it that this has been happening so you say my Islamic values come from my parents learn them as a young child you weren't forced to practice so you got to choose it which is great I decided to learn more about my faith in University okay and your ex grew up in the Middle East until he was 25 so totally different culture right so they were quite judgmental and harsh with you for not practicing Islam as they did in their culture women are expected to be obedient and quiet um and I you know I I really don't judge that you would want to go into a traditional religion and you'd be drawn to that orderly way of life that that's reverent towards things and has meaning built in I don't judge that what I judge is that they totally denigrated you that they didn't respect the marriage that had happened and Layla I can't help but Wonder if there's a piece of the story either that you couldn't tell me or that you don't see yet about you know what what was the big Conflict for them weren't they did they not give their blessings to the wedding in the first place what was it that drove your husband to marry you when he had these horrible attitudes towards you so it just the impression I get from the outside is just that you went in in good faith and they just totally turned against you and just shoved you out of the family and a divorce came down and it's not what you wanted which is interesting we're going to get to that so but you you got into something where women are expected to be obedient and quiet and when the guy starts emotionally abusing you you try to be more obedient and more quiet and I'm trying to look for the analogy of what that sounds like where somebody annihilates their own personality and their own autonomy to try to get an abusive person to like them maybe trauma bonding maybe Stockholm syndrome right then you say after this after this difficult marriage I still notice myself wishing I had done something differently and said things differently and that it would have worked out so here's where you have um a notion that you possibly had control over the situation if you just could have turned into a different person and been been different said different things and then it would have worked out that he would have loved you if you were not you and I'm just going to phrase it that way because that is such cptsd thinking they would love me if I could not be me and I've noticed this in some people who like where parents said I wish you were never born they get so good at trying to you know chameleon themselves and change into something they think the parent will accept that they literally can't remember who they are and Layla I think that might have started to happen with you and it's very important that we just stop that process right now so let's go through the letter um there were so many situations that I interpreted as abandonment I don't think you interpreted I think this is a case where you literally were abandoned your ex-husband told you to pack a bag and leave the house and I don't know what prompted that but yes you were kicked out of the house and when you left to stay at your parents house they also kicked you out for a different reason and it was because you wanted to work on the marriage and resolve things with him so I take it your parents thought he was a real ass and they really really didn't want you with him and what I'm seeing in your letter here is there's a little bit of maybe cognitive dissonance where your parents are doing and saying things and the family is doing saying things that says something really bad has happened but your mind keeps thinking no if I would just change myself I think I could fix this and I know how trauma like makes a person think that I know it's not crazy I know it's not your fault I know it comes from that injury that happened to you through the way you were treated when you were a kid but I think to outside people perhaps it looks so irrational that it's frightening and that perhaps and I'm guessing that the conflict between you and your ex-husband was pretty messy and leaked over and created a lot of drama throughout the family and they had some sort of vested interest in you not going back to that because I can't imagine parents being that intense about you not going back to somebody unless the abuse was even more serious than you're telling me I think it's I think I think that's possible that you're not able to express it or see it yet then you said when you left your parents house you went to stay in a hotel for two weeks until they let you come back so you wanted to go back home you wanted to return they wouldn't let you because of what you wanted and you went back and again your mother kept threatening you and emotionally abusing you until it became physically abusive now this is wow that's really bad I know what it is to have a loved one in an abusive relationship and to feel desperate to help them get out of it it is very hard when a person is being abused sometimes they can be so irrationally drawn back into the abuse that even when the whole family helps to coordinate you know an exit or a break or something that can calm the relationship down and give a little air for people to think that even then an abused person for somebody who doesn't get it who hasn't themselves been abused they look like they are indifferent disrespectful just being crazy you know just like no no I'm gonna go back I don't care that you did all this for me so I'm only trying to guess like why would your mother be so angry with you this is to the point that she physically abused you I'm not going to blame you for it something's wrong with anybody who does that but I'm just wondering like what were her motives and then you say when she hit you you didn't care about your head and you didn't care that she hit you you felt like you deserved all the pain that everybody was putting you through you felt numb okay there it is there's the clue that somehow little Layla let in this idea of not being good and that somebody being endlessly critical never accepting never praising never giving approval unless you did exactly as you were told there was no room for your personality maybe maybe you didn't get to develop it I've noticed you know I'm not a therapist I'm not a researcher but I've just noticed that a lot of times when people have been traumatized and in myself it's as if our development our maturation gets slowed down it gets it's I don't think it's as magical as getting stuck at a certain age in our lives but it gets slowed down and there's there's this incredible toughness and kind of old soul maturity to us and at the same time an emotional immaturity that's that just says you know I'll I'll change myself I want to go back into the abusive situation with the man with my mom I'll go back in I'll change myself why is this happening and why it's happening is because you think you deserve it and because you're numb you can't feel it which by the way is a symptom you didn't cause but you're I want to help you um heal that help you get unnamed and it's painful not you know facing what's really happening but if you weren't numb you'd be seeing this is nothing for you to be in and that's a tough situation going out on your own and having no shelter with family you had to pay your brother to stay with him for a while um maybe what you mean is you you shared the rent or something I don't know but the way you phrased it is that you paid your brother to stay with him I just get the picture of a young woman alone adrift unsupported trying to make sense of everything and having a a traumatized mind that can only sees only one option to somehow change into who you imagine they demand that you be that you become exactly who they're telling you to be but you know what Layla I don't hear anybody telling you to be anything right now I think I think whatever they think about you doesn't matter at this point this is a crisis for you to begin to take steps towards the life that you want now you said the divorce is finalized and you and your mother don't keep such close contact well in a way good you know perhaps you and your mother can be healed later something can be worked out then I'm really glad this x is out of your life I hope you can allow that to be for good don't make contact Let It Go you're worried you are worried that you just stepped away from all the abuse but if you were to encounter another abusive situation you would very deeply believe you deserved it too so there you go there's your wise self knowing what your next step is you need to work with that piece of you that feels like you deserve abuse there's something in you that is carrying a lot of Shame and guilt and self-attack so that when people do this to you there's something about it that makes sense and there's something about it that paralyzes you and doesn't give you a um you know when you're healed Layla and somebody does this treats you this way you're going to go don't you dare treat me this way you will fight back because it's rational and it's right you will fight back so that fight in you has been suppressed by your belief that you're only going to get loved so you said can you can I help you figure out how to heal from abandonment wounds and that is exactly what's going on here you have abandonment wounds and that's why it's so hard not to try to cling to the relationship that you know is just and how to stop ruminating and judging yourself for the mistakes you made that caused you to get kicked out of your ex-husband's house I didn't hear any mistakes I don't know maybe there was some mistakes but from what you told me it was not you got kicked out for reasons that didn't have to do with you did he impulsively marry you against his parents wishes did they threaten him or something with I don't know something was happening there that does not appear to have anything to do with you and you can you know get into the comments and correct me if I'm wrong really did you do something to bring that on those are not your mistakes you know what's funny is When people's self-esteem is really hurt this is not funny but what's odd is that when self-esteem is super low a person can think that she can you know she can cause everything to get better or that it was her fault it got so bad and in a weird way that's very grandiose right that you made everybody reject you and I'm just telling you like in ordinary families everybody kind of has a vested interest in doing their best with the spouses of the young people in the family and in such a short time and with the stuff that he was saying I don't know something is very very wrong with this picture I hope you fought back I hope the things that you think are mistakes are when you said hey screw you people you don't get to treat me this way I was not created to be this for you like a punching bag to put down and to exclude now Layla let's talk about what you can do to start changing your life I'm going to encourage you to go ahead and let all contact stop with your husband that sounds healthy and rational I'm going to encourage you to hold on pause your relationship with your mom because of the physical abuse it sounds like she may have some best interests at heart for you but right now that relationship sounds really harsh it's time for you to have some Independence it's time for you to start to finally have the space to be who you are not defined by the parents criticizing you or the husband criticizing you and trying to please them so I know you have a couple things you've been to University you have a faith that you love and I assume those are two communities where you have friends you have somewhere to go I would also recommend if you are not already in therapy I think having a therapist would be a very important thing right now what you've been through is so traumatic that being with somebody who's trustworthy and knowledgeable and who is there for you like for weekly appointments to help you make sense of what happened and to really hold a space for you to figure out like who are you what do you actually want in your life what does this look like what does it mean the way you you want to keep getting drawn like a moth to the flame into very bad situations where you get hurt and you and you get destroyed and and then to start taking steps to make that better whether it's through your faith or 12-step groups or counseling or some existing friends you have from your past I really encourage you to have a group of women friends who you can spend time with people who get together sometimes and laugh and talk to each other about what's really going on and who support each other and who you can call and text at ten o'clock at night when something bad has happened and you have so much pain coming up I think when you've been in a terrible relationship of any kind and this sounds like a trauma bonding type thing there's always going to be a period of withdrawal and you can think of it like a drug addiction it's not really the same thing but it has a lot of the same characteristics is a lot of the function of the drama of an abusive relationship is that it keeps you away from Deep sad feelings that come up and it happens to everybody like sadnesses in everybody but having been through what you have been through just accept it's okay you're going to have sadness there's nothing wrong with being sad it it can be too much to deal with sometimes but that's why I'm suggesting you support yourself with people like just like like pad your life with good people who care about you and have your best interest and who are willing to listen to you and support you and you still have plenty of time to have your life unfold in a positive way that fits who you really are and and on your way from where you are right now to things getting better you're going to have all these experiences of friendships and happy things and hard things and sad things and times when you're scared and times when you don't know what you're going to make it times when you feel depressed and it's all okay it's all part of it because what you're free to do right now is let your life unfold and become populated with the people who fit you and the activities that fit you and you're only beginning to find out what that's going to feel like but I think you're gonna like it I think you're gonna like it so just build it into the plan there are going to be sad times there's going to be times when you feel like oh you've just got to contact that ex-husband that's the trauma talking I I really can honestly not see any scenario where contacting him would lead to anything good or constructive for you emotionally but that's when you have a therapist your therapist is going to help you with that I have some friends and we help each other eat healthy and we have a shared concept together called bunny slippers and bunny slippers I don't even own a pair of bunny slippers but we tell each other hey bunny slippers and that means put on your comfy slippers and treat yourself very gently today when you're having a hard time when you feel like you can't get through something bunny slippers all right I would love for you to come take my free course the daily practice it's always linked Down Below in the description section and I teach these techniques where you can take these harsh feelings that come up and you can just take them out onto paper using this very specific technique these are the techniques that help me me come come out of my deep trauma back in the day and I offer them free to anybody in the world who wants to try them and they're we have free calls every two weeks where we use the techniques together I take questions I'd love to meet you there it's always a pleasure when I've answered somebody's letter on a YouTube video and then they show up in a call and I'm like is that you hi I just want to do a virtual hug you can do that we're a place you can come and so for people for people who have professional help and friends and people who don't have those things having tools and techniques that you can use anytime to help calm those intense emotions is such a good thing to have and all you need to do it is some paper and a pen and I keep them in my purse all the time that's one of the ways that I take care of myself and you can too where you just know you're in a bunny slipper phase of life always have pen and paper on you so that you can use these techniques to just you know let it out a little bit let it out a little bit and then that gives you some freedom to kind of handle you you know when you're out at a dinner party or uh shopping somewhere and the feelings are coming up and you're panicking and you're getting triggered you have a way always at your fingertips to bring that back down and to be able to carry on and finish the shopping or or say good night gracefully to your hosts or whatever you're doing you have freedom now it's a little bit like having a tank of oxygen for a scuba diver you can go into this world that's not always easy for you and you know you can breathe and you know you can come back out you'll be able to get get free from it so for anybody watching if you relate to this story and you think that your childhood trauma may have affected the way that you're able to see reality and take care of yourself today I invite you to come take my cptsd quiz it's always linked Down Below in the description section right at the top you can take that there and if this topic is important to you and you want to keep learning a little more about what I can teach you about standing up to emotional abuse I've got a video lined up right here and I will see you very soon [Music]

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

Views: 140,283

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Id: UF233ZARZrE

Length: 28min 54sec (1734 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 17 2021