Do trauma survivors “take things personally?” You bet.
You would, too, if you’d been conditioned to believe that EVERYTHING was your fault— and EVERYTHING was your responsibility.
As survivors, we very often struggle to separate who we are from how we perform.
We very often struggle to separate our worth from what others think of us or how they react to use.
Very often, trauma survivors have been conditioned to believe that our value, such as it is, depends on our ability to produce; or entertain; or arouse.
If and when our ability to produce, or entertain, or arouse deteriorates, we get worried that we will no longer be valuable to the people around us— and that we’ll be rejected and abandoned in short order.
When you lay it out like that, it may not sound logical or sensical.
But in our head, it is VERY real— because that scenario very often represents actual experiences we’ve had.
Trauma survivors have often learned, the hard way, that our value to certain people is not absolute.
We’ve often learned, the hard way, that there really are people who will cut us loose when our presence is no longer of immediate, demonstrable value to their goals.
We’ve learned to feel expendable— because that was how we were treated in many of our most important relationships, often very early in our lives.
Survivors of emotional neglect especially tend to struggle with this.
Abuse often conditions victims to believe they were made to be used and discarded.
Neglect conditions victims to believe they’re not worth paying either positive or negative attention to.
So survivors of neglect often grow up believing they have to work extra hard to be even remotely visible.
They grow up believing they have to work extra hard to be even sort of valuable.
They often grow up believing it was something about them that made their caretakers ignore them— they must not have been “special” enough, or entertaining enough, or attractive enough…not “good” enough.
So: yes. Survivors of abuse and neglect absolutely take things personally— usually because we never got the kind of assurance we needed to believe that not everything that happens to us is a referendum on our worth or “goodness.”
We could have, should have, received assurance that we are worthy and valuable even on days when we’re not particularly attractive; not particularly entertaining; not particularly energetic; not particularly engaged.
But we didn’t.
We could have, should have, received assurance that nobody’s behavior TOWARD us could, by definition, take value AWAY from us.
But we didn’t.
We could have, should have, received received assurance that not everything is about us. NOT everything is our fault. NOT everything is our responsibility.
But we didn’t.
So now, in trauma recovery, as adults, we have to kind of start over, with all that.
We’re faced with the task of reconditioning our highly sensitive nervous system, which has been CONVINCED for years that we’re probably “the problem” in any given situation.
It’s not a choice we’re making to believe that. It’s programming. Conditioning.
The good news about conditioning, even trauma conditioning, is that it is reversible. Trauma recovery is the project of reconditioning our nervous system with beliefs and habits and feelings WE choose, that support the life WE’RE trying to create.
Keep at it. Just keep chipping away.
Use Your Damn Skills 