What helps you feel emotionally safe?

Click Here to watch the video (opens in a new tab)

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Review: What is Developmental Trauma?

Developmental trauma is different. It is not one event. It is not even a series of events. It is the result of growing up inside danger itself—when the entire atmosphere of the home is threatening and every waking moment is spent trying to survive. Developmental trauma is embedded in an abusive family system that continues on into adulthood. 

This type of trauma can involve many forms, such s physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional abuse, or chronic instability. While the details differ, the focus of this series is the common thread running through them all: the things a child must do in order to survive.

What is a Home with Developmental Trauma like?

A home governed by silent rules where belonging requires self-betrayal. A home where a child’s perceptions, emotions, and instincts become dangerous because they threaten the system. What is true becomes less important than what is permitted.

What is the Child’s Deepest Fear?

Beneath all of this lies the deepest fear a child can experience: being completely alone. To a child, attachment is survival. The cost of preserving that attachment is enormous. What is sacrificed is not merely truth, but the child’s sense of self.

My home was this way, and at the age of 63, I am still dealing with the aftermath.

Healing Trauma

For most of my life, healing meant understanding. I studied trauma. I went to therapy. I processed memories. I slowly began separating truth from the lies. But then in later life, something unexpected happened. Instead of feeling better, buried emotions began to surface. Old fears intensified. Grief appeared where numbness had once existed. Parts of myself that had been silent for decades suddenly demanded attention.

Why Does Healing Feel Harder Before it Feels Better?

It feels harder because healing is not simply the process of understanding what happened. It is the process of reconnecting with the parts of ourselves that were sacrificed in order to survive. And that is where the terror lives. When long-buried wounds begin to surface, what was once hidden must finally be felt.

Why Are Long-Buried Wounds So Scary?

Long-buried wounds contain the terror we learned not to feel. The grief we could not afford to touch. The anger we buried. The needs we denied. The lies we accepted about ourselves and the world. For years, these wounds remained hidden beneath layers of adaptation and conditioning. But healing has a way of bringing them back into view. Not to punish us, but to be acknowledged. Not to overwhelm us, but to finally be felt. Silence begins to find its voice, and the self that was sacrificed for survival slowly begins to emerge—and it feels scary. 

The Early Process of Healing

For a long time, healing felt like progress.

Understanding brought relief. Insight created clarity. Things that once felt confusing began to make sense. There was movement. There was direction. There was even hope.

I began to feel less suicidal. I started to think I might be able to “do life.” I felt better, I slept better. I started to believe reality instead of the lies. But there came a point at which all the processing and understanding was over, and I was still left with the deeper layer of damage. Now, thinking through it, reading about it, and processing it weren’t enough. 

The Deeper Layers Emerge

Instead of continuing to feel better, it began to feel harder.

Not all at once. But steadily.

Emotions that had been quiet began to rise. Reactions felt stronger, not weaker. Old pain surfaced in ways that were difficult to contain or explain.

It can feel like something is going wrong. Like you are regressing. Like all the work you’ve done is unraveling. But what is actually happening is something very different.

In Developmental Trauma, Parts of the Self Never Had the Chance to Exist

In developmental trauma, there are parts of the self that never had the chance to fully exist. Not because they weren’t there, but because they were not safe.

Terror and fear had to be suppressed. Anger had to be contained. Grief had no place to go. Needs had to be ignored.

In order to survive, the system reorganized itself around protection. Some parts became highly functional—capable, responsible, productive, and adapted to the environment. Other parts were pushed out of awareness entirely.

Not erased.

But waiting.

The Process of Healing

Healing does not begin with those buried parts. It begins with understanding. With small moments of safety. With the gradual realization that the danger is no longer present.

And as the nervous system slowly begins to register that something is different, it starts to loosen its grip.

This is where something unexpected happens. The parts that were held back begin to surface. Not because something is wrong. But because it is finally safe enough for them to be felt.

When those parts emerge, they do not come quietly. They carry everything that was never processed at the time: terror, grief, anger, confusion, helplessness, and loss. And because those experiences were originally overwhelming, they can still feel overwhelming when they return.

This is Why Healing Can Feel Harder

When it “feels harder,” it is not because you are “getting worse.”

It happens like this because you are finally feeling what was always there.

What once had to stay hidden is now visible. What once had to be suppressed is now being allowed.

This Stage is Often Misunderstood

Many survivors find themselves wondering, “I was doing better before I started this work.” Or, “Why does everything feel worse now?”

But what looked like stability before was often containment. The system was holding things in place. Holding things down. Holding things together. Now that containment is loosening. And what was buried underneath is beginning to move.

This is Not Regression

It is exposure.

The nervous system is not breaking down. It is completing something.

Earlier in life, there was no safe way to process what was happening. The system did what it had to do. It stored the pain. It contained the emotions. It kept you functioning. Now, under different conditions, it is attempting to resolve what was left unfinished. This is why emotions can feel disproportionate. Why reactions can seem confusing. Why the intensity may not match the present moment.

The body is not reacting to now.

It is releasing what was never allowed then.

At this stage, insight is still helpful—but it is no longer the primary tool. Understanding what is happening matters. But trying to think your way through it will not move it through.

What is needed here is different.

Patience.

Space.

Safety.

The ability to stay present without shutting the experience down or running from it.

This is not about forcing resolution.

It is about allowing completion.

If healing feels harder right now—if emotions are surfacing in ways that feel unfamiliar or overwhelming—it does not mean you are doing it wrong.

It may mean you are finally safe enough to feel what you could not feel before.

This is not the end of healing.

It is a deeper layer of it.

And it will not stay this intense forever.

Defy Trauma, Embrace Joy—even if it takes a little while

To receive a free monthly newsletter and more Trauma Informed Blogs, go to:https://rebekahlaynebrown.com/deftrauma

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

From the outside, this can look irrational. People may even say something like, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” That question does not always help because the survivor may not know how to answer it, or they know exactly how to answer it and also know the answer will bring its own set of issues. Many trauma survivors do not avoid help because they are proud, stubborn, dramatic, or irresponsible. They avoid help because help itself carries its own history.

Help Was Not Always Help

For people raised in safer environments, help may mean support, repair, guidance, protection, or shared burden. For trauma survivors, help may mean something else entirely. Help may have meant being shamed for needing anything, being told they were too sensitive, too needy, too much, too weak, too dramatic, or too difficult. It may have meant asking an adult for protection and being ignored, disclosing harm often before they were ready or felt safe, and then being blamed for creating trouble. It may have meant being rescued publicly and punished privately. So, for many survivors, the mere thought of help came with strings attached.

A parent helped, then used it later as evidence of debt. A partner helped, then expected compliance. A friend helped, then gossiped. A professional helped, then misread the whole situation. A family member helped, then acted like the survivor’s need was proof of incompetence.

After enough of that, the body learns a harsh lesson: need is not neutral, it can expose you, lower your standing, give other people access, and can be used against you later.

So the survivor learns to delay, to handle it alone first, and to make sure the problem is serious enough to justify asking. Then they raise the threshold again… and again. Eventually they may not ask until the situation is already in crisis. That delay is learned protection.

The Survivor May Not Recognize the Need Early

Some survivors do not ask for help because they do not register the early stages of distress accurately. When a person has lived with chronic stress long enough, overload can start to feel normal. Not healthy – familiar. The body may adapt to fatigue, anxiety, pain, fear, confusion, and pressure as baseline conditions. That means early warning signs may not look like warning signs at all.

The survivor may think:

• I am just tired.
• I just need to get through this week.
• Other people have it worse.
• I should be able to handle this.
• It is not bad enough yet.
• I do not want to bother anyone.
• I can fix it before anyone has to know.

Those thoughts may sound responsible on the surface and sometimes they are. As adults, we should not outsource every discomfort because part of adulting is to tolerate inconvenience, stress, uncertainty, and ordinary strain. But trauma changes the scale. A survivor may have been trained to tolerate conditions that should have triggered support much earlier. They may minimize pain because pain was ignored, normalize fear because fear was constant, and may keep functioning because stopping was never allowed.

NIMH describes PTSD as involving symptoms that can interfere with relationships, work, sleep, eating, concentration, and daily life. People may remain stressed or frightened even when they are no longer in danger. That matters because a survivor may not realize how much daily functioning has already been compromised until the symptoms have moved from manageable to dangerous.

By the time they ask for help, other people may see the crisis as sudden. It usually was not sudden – it was quietly creep into their lives.

Asking Can Feel Like Losing Control

For some trauma survivors, control is not about arrogance. It is about safety. If asking for help means letting another person into the situation, the survivor may feel the loss of control immediately. Someone else may now have opinions. Questions… timelines… access… power… judgment… advice… records… and emotional reactions. That can feel intolerable if the survivor has a history of being overruled, trapped, coerced, diagnosed too quickly, threatened, exposed, or punished for telling the truth.

Even good help requires vulnerability. A doctor may need details, a therapist may ask about history, a friend may see the messy house, a partner may hear the fear, a lawyer may need documents, a supervisor may need an explanation, or a family member may need to know something the survivor worked hard to keep private.

That can make the survivor feel cornered – so they wait until the pain outweighs the exposure, until the fear of not asking becomes larger than the fear of asking, or until the body, the money, the relationship, the job, or the situation forces the issue. By then, the helper may be frustrated without considering why the survivor “acts like that” in the first place.

Shame Delays Disclosure

Shame is one of the biggest barriers to help-seeking. Shame does not simply say, “I made a mistake.” Shame says, “This situation proves something bad about me.” A trauma survivor may feel ashamed of being overwhelmed, of needing money, of still reacting after years have passed, of being lonely, of needing reassurance, of staying too long, of leaving too late, of being sick, or of not knowing what to do.

That shame can become especially strong in survivors who built their identity around competence. The reliable one. The strong one. The calm one. The professional one. The parentified one. The crisis-handler. The person others call when the room is on fire. For that person, asking for help may feel like identity failure.

They may be able to help everyone else through collapse but feel humiliated when their own system starts failing. They may know the right words clinically and still be unable to use them personally. They may understand trauma in theory and still feel defective when their own body reacts.

That gap can be brutal because knowledge does not automatically erase conditioning. A person can know better and still feel trapped inside their old reflexes.

Some Survivors Were Punished for Telling

Many trauma survivors learned early that disclosure is not always safe.

• Tell the teacher, and the family retaliates.
• Tell the parent, and the parent does not believe you.
• Tell the therapist, and the story gets mishandled.
• Tell the police, and nothing happens.
• Tell the family, and you become the problem.
• Tell the friend, and the friend disappears.
• Tell the truth, and everyone debates your tone instead of the harm.

After that, silence can become a survival tool. This is one reason trauma-informed care emphasizes safety, trustworthiness, collaboration, empowerment, and avoiding practices that recreate helplessness or coercion. SAMHSA’s trauma-informed framework treats physical and psychological safety as foundational rather than optional.

That is important to understand outside of therapy too. If a survivor has been punished for telling, then asking for help is not a simple communication skill. It is a risk assessment. They are not only asking, “Can this person help me?”

They may also be asking:

• Will this be used against me?
• Will I be believed?
• Will I be blamed?
• Will I lose control of what happens next?
• Will this person make it about themselves?
• Will they punish me later for needing them?
• Will they decide I am unstable?
• Will they tell someone else?

That is a lot happening beneath a sentence as simple as, “I need help.”

The High-Functioning Survivor Is Easy to Miss

High-functioning trauma survivors can be especially vulnerable to delayed help-seeking because everyone assumes they are okay. They work, answer emails, organize, care for others, appear steady, and may even be the person other people lean on. Their competence becomes camouflage but the concern is that competence does not cancel suffering. A person can be organized and suicidal. Productive and dissociated. Helpful and depleted. Funny and terrified. Articulate and privately falling apart. Professionally credible and personally overwhelmed. A person who carries too much for too long will eventually show strain somewhere. The fact that the strain was not convenient, visible, or easy to interpret does not mean it was not there.

Helpers Need to Lower the Cost of Asking

If we want trauma survivors to ask for help earlier, we have to make asking less costly. That does not mean becoming endlessly available or rescuing people from every consequence. Boundaries are important because helpers are human. Friends, partners, clinicians, families, and coworkers cannot become emergency containers for every emotional state.

For the survivor, there are ways to lower the threat level. A safe helper does not punish the first disclosure, they do not make the survivor prove pain through total collapse. They do not respond with contempt, interrogation, panic, gossip, immediate control, or use vulnerability later as ammunition.

A safe helper can say:

• “I’m glad you told me.”
• “Let’s slow this down and figure out the next step.”
• “You do not have to explain everything at once.”
• “I may not be able to fix all of it, but I can help you sort what comes next.”
• “Do you need listening, practical help, or professional support?”

That kind of response does not solve everything, but it gives the nervous system new data. Help did not turn into punishment this time and that awareness is important.

Survivors Can Practice Earlier Signals

For survivors, the work is not to become dependent, it is to stop treating help as something only allowed after personal collapse. That takes practice and it may begin with identifying earlier signals: sleep changes, appetite changes, stomach problems, dread, avoidance, irritability, crying more easily, feeling unreal, missing deadlines, withdrawing, obsessively rehearsing conversations, losing interest, or feeling unable to complete ordinary tasks.

Those signals should not be treated as disaster. They should be treated as information. The survivor can learn to see them as yellow lights instead of waiting for the red lights. That is not easy, because the old reflex may still say, “Handle it yourself.” Sometimes handling something yourself is appropriate. Adults need problem-solving skills, and not every discomfort requires outside intervention. But when self-reliance becomes isolation, and isolation becomes deterioration, the old reflex is no longer protecting the person. It is preserving the same conditions that once harmed them. Asking earlier does not have to mean telling everyone everything. It can mean making one appointment, sending one honest message, asking for one practical thing, naming one symptom, allowing one trusted person know the situation is getting heavy, using a crisis line before the crisis becomes irreversible, or contacting a clinician before the body forces a shutdown.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline remains a confidential, 24/7 referral and information service for people and families facing mental health or substance-use concerns, and FindTreatment.gov provides anonymous treatment-location searches in the U.S. Those resources are not a substitute for personal care, but they matter when someone needs a first door that does not require explaining everything to someone they know.

Asking for Help Is Not the Opposite of Strength

This is where we need to clean up the language because people often tell survivors, “Asking for help is strong.” That can be true, but it can also sound like a greeting card taped over a wound. As we already learned, for many survivors, asking for help does not feel strong, risky, humiliating, or like stepping into an old room where the rules were never safe. So maybe the better statement is this: Asking for help is not proof that you failed. It is proof that the situation should not stay private until it becomes dangerous. The difference between the two can be massive.

A trauma survivor does not need to become helpless to recover, and do not need to surrender discernment, boundaries, privacy, or adult responsibility. They do not need to tell unsafe people their business just to prove they are healing, but they do deserve support before collapse. They deserve care before the emergency stage, deserve to recognize distress before it becomes a full-body alarm, and deserve relationships, professional spaces, and support systems where asking does not recreate the old injury.

Sources 

Courtois, C. A., & Ford, J. D. (2016). Treatment of complex trauma: A sequenced, relationship-based approach. Guilford Press.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

National Institute of Mental Health. (2026). Post-traumatic stress disorder. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2026). Trauma-informed approaches and programs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2026). SAMHSA’s National Helpline. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

***Trigger Warning***

This article discusses specific, explicit, aspects of a personal trauma story. Please be kind to yourself as you read.

What do you carry with you every single day?

Many people quietly live in the world today with burdens from a life filled with trauma. It could be events that happened decades ago, but they feel like they permeate everything you say and do in your present life.

How do we help and support trauma survivors? Does anyone really care?

I believe that everyone’s life matters and nobody should suffer when there is help and support out there. I know, because I had to suffer alone for decades, until I discovered that there is help.

Many people tell me that the past is the past, and it’s best to leave it at that. I wish I could shake them at that moment and tell them:

“Don’t you get it at all….?”

Because trauma experiences follow survivors.

It’s in every breath we take, every emotion we feel and in every situation we encounter. It’s sitting there in the essence of our being and enhances everything tenfold.

Life unfolds in greater depth.

When bad situations happen, survivors feel them at quadruple intensity. Emotions such as sadness and anger can change the outlook of our day because we feel too much.

Don’t you think we would forget what happened to us if we could?

Trauma memories aren’t like normal memories.

They still live in the way you hold your body. They live in the tense shoulders, and inside that pain in your chest comes and goes when you hear a trigger.

• A smell
• A sound
• A certain accent
• Food
• Emotions from strangers nearby
• BAM!

The triggers take you back to a time you don’t want to revisit and keep you there in full 3D — like your very own movie. Your brain has hijacked your present and taken you back to the worst time of your life.

The memory movie doesn’t ask for an appointment in your calendar or knock on your door before wreaking havoc inside your nervous system.

Trauma hits you like a tornado and floods your head with images and feelings like a soup of pain. Nothing makes sense at that moment. Heck, you don’t even know where you are anymore and what year it is.

Everything stops as your brain hijacks your thoughts.

I was at a kid’s birthday party once, and something triggered me and I dropped a plate and froze. I scared all the kids from my robot-like state, and my own kids were crying when I couldn’t respond to them for a few moments. It was like having a seizure, except I don’t suffer from epilepsy. I’m a trauma survivor.

It’s embarrassing to have these traumatic flashbacks from triggers because most often, you cannot talk about what’s happening in your brain afterwards.

I mean who wants to share with their boss that you just had a vivid trauma memory about being gangraped? Or held at knife point? Or witnessed someone being strangled? It’s painful and far to private to be shared with anyone.

This is why trauma survivors suffer alone. But the pain is real. We are not mentally ill. We are traumatized and the pain can be healed by people showing kindness and compassion.

I’ve had all these memories in public situations. I know how it feels and embarrassment is top of my list.

It’s in the silent grief that never had a name because you were too young to understand what was happening to you. But your body remembers everything, including how you felt.

• Fear
• The pain
• The shame
• The guilt

Every emotion under the planet couldn’t explain what was going on in your head.

The symptoms that were never seen by a doctor and were dismissed untreated. You learned that you didn’t matter and it’s still a feeling you struggle with every day.

The silence that threatens to overcome every thought and action, which can suck out the air of the room in a nano second. (Yeah, you’re not sure about that one, but it’s there.)

The exhaustion that comes from trying to heal in a world where trauma has become the daily grind, but nobody does anything to acknowledge that it exists.

Why?

How do you function after reliving a memory like that?

I can tell you, it’s not easy because I’m living this life. As the years go by, the memories fade a little, and the worst of them don’t return in such horrific detail. Yet, they still return.

Does anyone care anymore about trauma survivors?

I do, and I see people’s pain. I don’t just see it; I feel it because I’ve lived with the same heaviness and grief for too long. I recognize it as a pair of comfortable sneakers that fit your body just right.

Except seeing people’s pain is nothing like those sneakers. It hurts to see someone in pain, and I want to help. Take away the pain so that nobody feels it the way I do.

When words aren’t enough to help my wounded soul, I turn to nature. I sit by the ocean and tune into the sea breeze. I listen to the sound of the waves and the sand as they meet. I hear the birds and creatures comforting screech.

Nature is where we come from.

My name is Lizzy. I’m a trauma survivor, a wife, a mom, a teacher, and an author.

If you like reading my posts, then please follow me.

For more about me: www.elizabethwoodsauthor.com

https://ko-fi.com/elizabe69245484

• How to Explain Complex PTSD to Loved Ones
• The 1% Ripple Effect
• Mental Health Matters
• What Do You Overcome Every Day?
• What is Your Inspiration?

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Loving an emotionally healthy partner

Here is Part 1 of this series.

If the adult child finds an emotionally healthy partner, they might feel uncomfortable because this person can challenge everything they learned about love. For the adult child, love was historically mixed with criticism, guilt, disappointment, and control while unconditional love and kindness can make the adult child suspicious and distrusting.

The adult child might wonder, “what does this person really want?”; “why are they so nice to me?”; “why do they love me like this?”; “when will the criticism come?” The absence of criticism can feel unfamiliar and unfamiliar doesn’t always feel safe.

The emotionally healthy partner may express appreciation, affection, gratitude and admiration. The adult child might hear the words, but struggle to internalize them because they might think to themselves, “if they really knew me, they wouldn’t feel like this.” Years of criticism can create a deeply rooted belief that love must be earned. However, the adult child’s difficulties with emotional regulation, if not recognized and handled through interventions, risks negative effects to their romantic relationships (Riggs, Cusimano & Benson, 2011).

Researchers have found links between childhood emotional maltreatment and reported difficulties in communication, relationship satisfaction, intimacy, empathy, hostility, defensiveness, and overall relationship quality (Vaillancourt-Morel et al., 2024).

Specifically, some research has discovered that men who grew up with parents who were chronically critical or did not provide a healthy emotional environment are found to provide their partners with less support, engagement, and positive communication skills and have a greater observation of negative traits like high levels of conflict (Malek & Papp, 2015).

The risks of refusing to recognize the unhealthy patterns

If the healthy partner is trying to hold up a mirror to their emotionally injured partner, that person will have to answer to their partner’s insistence that they’ve been unfairly treated, how much they’ve sacrificed, how very little recognition they received, and how long they’ve tolerated this treatment. Sometimes these adult children get angry at the messenger showing them the truth.

If you happen to be one of these people, you are potentially sacrificing your relationship to hold on to your old coping strategies with your parents. That is very direct, I know, but it is true. While you’re feeling tremendous pressure to remain loyal to your parents and the criticism dynamic, you’re putting your partner in the position of being second and ignoring the pain they feel on your behalf, or pain they get if they are also in the line of criticism fire.

If you are the partner in this situation, understand that your partner might feel a great sense of shame beneath the defensiveness, irritation, and anger. They grew up in a family where emotions were not processed in a healthy way, so they didn’t learn how to handle anger, grief, disappointment, and shame in healthy ways. Instead of saying to you, “I’m angry with my parents,” they say, “why are you making such a big deal out of this?” Understand that your partner’s frustration might be understandable, but that doesn’t make it something you must inherently accept.

Because of the environment in which the adult child grew up, healthy partners may see the unhealthy relationship patterns when they participate in family events. That healthy partner will notice how the adult child is treated by seeing and likely mentioning the criticism, double standards, manipulation, and lack of appreciation. A healthy partner will want the adult child to be treated differently.

The adult child, when confronted with this information, will feel conflicted because part of them will agree with what the partner sees, but part of them feels strongly compelled to protect their parents. This can create tension because the partner sees and hears harm while the adult child feels the need to remain loyal to their family and defensive of those unhealthy family dynamics.

Healthy and unhealthy conflict

The healthy partner might model healthy arguments and quick attempts to repair after a fight. In unhealthy households, disagreements don’t get discussed. Feelings run high and hot, but efforts to repair are not done. The adult child does not learn how to disagree in a healthy way. The adult child has not had modeling of emotional maturity, so they might struggle with the skills needed for healthy discussions, especially around disagreements or hurt feelings.

What also tends to happen in this dynamic is the overly criticized, unappreciated adult child takes their frustrations out on their partner. The partner might think, “your parents are the ones criticizing you all the time, but why do you seem angry with me?” From the adult child’s perspective, a lot is happening under the surface. The real reason is often this: his parents feel unsafe to confront.

For someone who grew up with chronic criticism, challenging the parent might feel emotionally dangerous, even in adulthood. Their nervous system learned not to argue, not to upset them, not to challenge them, and keep the peace. Unfortunately, those hurt feelings will often get redirected towards their partners. This is not because the partner deserves it, but because they’re the person least likely to abandon them (Finzi-Dottan & Abadi, 2024).

Healthy partners understand that conflict is just a part of being in a relationship. Relationships require work and sometimes compromise. Adult children of unhealthy family dynamics may not have the skills they need to participate in healthy conflict resolution and tend to be afraid of rejection and fear they won’t ever get true acceptance (Finzi-Dottan & Abadi, 2024). This is not a put-down for these people. It’s reality. Growing up in emotionally immature environments and then having potential relationships with emotionally immature people does not equip these people with the skills needed for healthy discussions and arguments.

In healthy relationships, disagreements can happen without the relationship being threatened. Many people who grew up in the unhealthy dynamics tend to result in insecure attachments to romantic partners (Riggs & Kaminski, 2010). A healthy partner should be able to have constructive conversations that might be difficult, without fearing the other person will shut down and threaten them to leave. Someone raised by highly critical parents may unconsciously expect rejection, withdrawal, punishment or humiliation and because of that, a simple disagreement can trigger intense anxiety because their nervous system learned long ago that conflict equals danger.

A thinking myth might be at play here and that is the healthy partner believes that the person they’re dealing with is their present-day partner. However, if this partner is in the family environment that is filled with emotional dysregulation and criticism, or in moments of high stress, they may actually be encountering old survival strategies that were formed decades before. The partner that becomes defensive, shuts down, redirects anger, blames the healthy partner, or chases parental approval is not consciously choosing the childhood patters, but reverting to those strategies that once helped them survive.

Understanding this does not excuse the behavior and, if the adult child wants to improve their relationships, they need to first recognize what they’re doing, forgive themselves for that, and learn how to behave and respond differently to preserve or create a healthy partnership.

You do not have to keep engaging in these disrespectful interactions

If you are the criticized adult partner, it is your responsibility to recognize it and stop it, and if you cannot stop it, then you learn how to function in that dynamic by learning new ways of responding to parental criticism without internalizing it and processing difficult emotions. The technical word for this is learning emotional regulation and if you grew up in the chronic criticism, then you grew up in an emotionally dysregulated environment (Riggs, 2010).

Learning HOW to regulate emotions might require reading about it and seeking therapy. I know, I know… so many people say therapy is the answer, but this is something serious and severe that needs someone outside of you to help navigate and learn coping skills. Therapy does not mean you are broken. It does not mean you are weak. It does not mean your relationship with your partner is breaking apart. It means you’re taking ownership of your situation and trying to improve it for you, your partner, your current or future children, and, what’s even better, every single generation after them. Your partner will be very grateful and likely even help you in that process with a generous and loving heart.

References

Finzi-Dottan, R., & Abadi, H. (2024). From Emotional Abuse to a Fear of Intimacy: A Preliminary Study of the Mediating Role of Attachment Styles and Rejection Sensitivity. International journal of environmental research and public health, 21(12), 1679. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph21121679

Maleck S., Papp L. M. (2015). Childhood risky family environments and romantic relationship functioning among young adult dating couples. Journal of Family Issues, 36(5), 567–588. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513×13491749

Riggs, S. A. (2010). Childhood Emotional Abuse and the Attachment System Across the Life Cycle: What Theory and Research Tell Us. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 19(1), 5–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926770903475968

Riggs, S. A., Cusimano, A. M., & Benson, K. M. (2011). Childhood emotional abuse and attachment processes in the dyadic adjustment of dating couples. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(1), 126–138. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021319

Riggs, S. A., & Kaminski, P. (2010). Childhood Emotional Abuse, Adult Attachment, and Depression as Predictors of Relational Adjustment and Psychological Aggression. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 19(1), 75–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926770903475976

Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Godbout, N., Bigras, N., Sabourin, S., & Bergeron, S. (2024). Partner effects of childhood maltreatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(2), 1323–1343. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231173427

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

There is a strange thing that can happen when a trauma survivor finally reaches a quieter life. They do not relax; they wait. They wait for the phone call, the slammed door, the accusation, the shift in someone’s tone, the bill they forgot, the person who seemed fine yesterday but may turn cold today. They wait for the next threat, even when nothing in the room says a threat is present. The body is not being dramatic. It is running an old survival program that once helped that person stay alive, stay prepared, stay watchful, or stay out of the way.

That is one of the crueler parts of trauma recovery. Safety may arrive before the nervous system believes it. A person can be out of the violent home, away from the abusive partner, years removed from the childhood environment, and still feel uneasy when nothing bad is happening. Sometimes the uneasiness gets worse when nothing bad is happening. Calm can feel staged. Quiet can feel temporary. Stability can feel like the pause before someone changes the rules. Kindness can feel like the first move in a longer game.

People who have not lived this often misunderstand it. They may say, “You’re safe now,” as if the survivor missed an obvious fact. They may think reassurance should work quickly because the danger is no longer visible. Some even become hurt or annoyed when the survivor cannot receive peace the way they expected.

But trauma does not train the nervous system through reassurance. It trains through repetition, shock, betrayal, threat, helplessness, and consequence. If safety once disappeared without warning, the body may not trust safety just because the room is quiet.

Safety Is More Than the Absence of Danger

Most people think safety means danger is gone. For trauma survivors, that definition is too thin. Safety is not only the absence of yelling. It is not only the absence of violence, manipulation, chaos, humiliation, addiction, neglect, sexual threat, emotional punishment, or household unpredictability. Those absences are necessary. No one heals well while the injury is still being repeated.

But safety also has to become recognizable inside the body, and this is where many survivors get blindsided. A survivor may enter a genuinely safer environment and still carry an internal alarm system calibrated to the old one. The body may scan for changes in tone. It may track footsteps. It may notice silence that lasts too long. It may read a delayed reply as rejection, facial neutrality as contempt, ordinary conflict as abandonment, or someone else’s mood as an incoming threat.

This is often misperceived a weakness but, in reality, it is conditioning. The nervous system learned that small cues could mean trouble. Sometimes they did. In a dangerous home, the shift from ordinary to unsafe can happen fast. A look across the room may tell a child whether to disappear. A pause in a conversation may tell a partner whether an explosion is coming. A change in breathing may tell someone whether to leave, freeze, flatter, explain, comply, or brace.

Then later, in safer adult life, those same detection systems keep firing. Sure, the danger has changed, but the body has not caught up yet.

Temporary Calm Trains the Body to Wait

One reason safety can feel like a trap is that many trauma survivors did not grow up with steady calm. They grew up with temporary calm and temporary calm is very different.

Temporary calm is the quiet before someone starts drinking again. The soft voice before the accusation, the good day before the withdrawal, the apology before the next incident, the holiday where everyone performs normal life for visitors, the clean kitchen before the screaming starts, and the calm adult who stays calm only until the child makes one wrong sound.

A nervous system raised around temporary calm does not automatically experience quiet as relief – instead, it’s more like a countdown.

That survivor may become more tense when things are peaceful. They may create tasks, problems, plans, or mental noise because stillness leaves too much room for waiting. They may over-prepare, over-check, over-explain, over-clean, or over-function. They may feel restless in healthy relationships because nobody is making them earn their place every few minutes.

Then the shame comes in. They know they “should” enjoy the calm yet may feel guilty for not enjoying it. They may tell themselves they are ungrateful, damaged, difficult, or impossible to satisfy. And that kind of self-attack does not help the nervous system learn safety. In reality, it adds another layer of pressure.

The Body May Associate Safety With Exposure

For some survivors, danger did not arrive when they were already guarded. It arrived when they trusted, slept, disclosed, hoped, loved, laughed, needed, rested, or believed someone. And that personal history leaves a mark.

• If vulnerability was punished, the body may treat peace as exposure.
• If tenderness was followed by betrayal, kindness may feel suspicious. If rest was interrupted by chaos, sleep may feel unsafe.
• If asking for help led to ridicule or punishment, dependence may feel humiliating.
• If happiness drew jealousy, mockery, sabotage, or control, joy may feel risky.

This is why a survivor may seem calm during crisis but uneasy during intimacy.

Crisis is familiar and gives the body a job. The survivor knows how to assess, act, manage, scan, solve, or endure. Quiet safety asks for something much more difficult. It asks the survivor to lower the shield without knowing, at first, whether lowering it is a wise or safe move. For someone who survived repeated harm, the fear is not always danger itself. Sometimes the fear is being unprepared for danger. Vigilance can feel like participation while trust can feel like standing still in a room where the exits have not been checked.

That is a large request for a nervous system that learned survival by staying ready.

Why Safer Life Can Feel Worse at First

From the outside, mistrust of safety can look confusing. A survivor may pull away from stable people and may become irritable when life improves. They may feel emotionally flat after good news, mistrust a partner who is consistent, and feel more anxious after leaving the unsafe situation than they felt while inside it. That last one especially confuses people, but it happens.

During active survival, the body often stays organized around immediate demands. Get through the day, keep the peace, watch the mood, protect the children or pets, hide the evidence, make the money, say the right thing, avoid the explosion, and by all means, do not collapse… yet.

Once the survivor gets out, the body may finally begin releasing what it had to hold. And that release can feel like deterioration when it is delayed impact. The survivor may think they are feeling worse because distance gives the system room to reveal the damage. That does not mean the safer life is wrong. It means the nervous system needs time, repetition, and evidence. Not one peaceful day, not one kind conversation, not one safe person making promises, but repeated evidence for your body and mind. In other words, safety has to stop being an idea and become lived experience.

Rebuilding Safety Is Often Repetitive Work

Real safety recovery is not usually a sudden breakthrough where the survivor announces they are healed and then moves through life regulated forever. Instead, it may look like noticing that someone disagreed without punishing you, going to sleep and waking up without crisis, asking a simple question and receiving a simple answer, a partner staying steady during inconvenience, a friend respecting a boundary without sulking, a therapist not rushing interpretation, or the survivor leaving a room and realizing no one chased them, mocked them, or made them pay for it later.

Small evidence counts because trauma was often built from small evidence too. The nervous system did not learn danger only from major events, it learned from the repeated signals surrounding those events. Tone, timing, facial shifts, silence, footsteps, doorways, names called from another room, text messages, late arrivals, alcohol breath, forced smiles, and the false calm before punishment.

So recovery often requires a new body record. Consistency is not glamorous, but it can be corrective.

Safe People Do Not Demand Instant Trust

One of the cleanest ways to assess safety is to watch how people respond to a survivor’s pace. Unsafe people often demand trust as proof of loyalty. They rush disclosure, punish hesitation, frame boundaries as rejection, become offended when the survivor needs time, and may say, “After everything I’ve done for you, you still don’t trust me?”

That is not safety, it’s pressure with better manners. Safe people do not need instant access and do not treat a trauma survivor’s caution as an insult. They understand that trust built under pressure is compliance, not trust. This does not mean survivors should never challenge their fear. Avoidance can shrink a life until the person is technically protected but emotionally imprisoned. Healing does require risk, practice, and contact with situations that are uncomfortable but not actually dangerous.

But the pace has to make sense because a survivor needs enough challenge to grow and enough control to stay present. Too little challenge can keep life small but too much challenge can recreate helplessness. That middle ground is where real trauma work often lives.

The Goal Is Accurate Response, Not Constant Calm

A healthy nervous system does not feel safe every second. That’s a good thing because that would not be realistic or useful. The goal is accuracy. An accurate response.

A recovering trauma survivor learns, slowly, to tell the difference between old danger and current risk. Between discomfort and threat. Between disappointment and abandonment. Between someone’s bad mood and personal danger. Between a pause and rejection. Between privacy and secrecy. Between conflict and catastrophe.

That takes work because trauma compresses categories and teaches the body to treat many different signals as one warning: harm is coming. Recovery begins separating those signals again.

That process is not always smooth especially when survivors overcorrect. They may trust too fast in one season and trust no one in the next, mistake boredom for safety or intensity for connection, and may confuse predictability with emotional deadness because chaos once felt like proof that something serious was happening.

This is where patience has to be practical rather than sentimental and that’s why the nervous system needs new data, and new data takes time.

When Safety Starts to Feel Real

Safety begins to feel real when the body stops waiting for every calm moment to turn. It may happen quietly. For examples, a survivor realizes they did not flinch when the phone rang, did not rehearse 12 explanations before answering a message, have finally slept through the night, allowed someone to be mildly disappointed without rushing to fix it, and accepted kindness without immediately searching for the catch.

For a trauma survivor, these are not minor moments – they often signal steps in a major nervous-system correction. Safety does not become real because someone announces it. It only becomes real when the survivor’s body has enough repeated evidence to stop treating peace as a setup.

That is why telling themselves “you’re safe now” can feel hollow when it is said too soon. Instead, saying “my body may need time to believe what my life is trying to show it” is more accurate. It also accurately reflects the work. Not forced trust, not denial, and not pretending the past is over because the address changed, the relationship ended, or the crisis passed. The work is teaching the body, through repeated reality, that calm does not always mean danger is waiting behind the door.

Sometimes calm is just calm and, for many survivors, believing that is not the beginning of recovery – it is one of the hardest-earned outcomes.

Sources

Courtois, C. A., & Ford, J. D. (2016). Treatment of complex trauma: A sequenced, relationship-based approach. Guilford Press.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

National Institute of Mental Health. (2025). Post-traumatic stress disorder. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). SAMHSA’s concept of trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. (2025). Complex PTSD. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

I’m Embarrassed That I Exist

Carter’s Story

Carter had been looking forward to his trip home. After being financially independent since he was 18 and nearly depleting his savings during his first years of graduate school, he needed the film equipment his family had promised to help purchase for his final thesis project. “Make sure to leave room in your suitcase,” his parents had reminded him repeatedly before his visit. “You’ll need space to bring back your birthday gifts.”

The day before his birthday party—the first his family had thrown for him in almost 20 years—Carter and his brother Samuel went to lunch. “After tomorrow, you’ll have everything you need for your film thesis,” Samuel assured him with a smile. Carter felt a mixture of gratitude and unease; his family had never shown much interest in his filmmaking aspirations before.

Samuel ran a non-profit food bank and was father to five children. Within the family and their community, he was universally admired for his selflessness and service. Carter, by contrast, had always struggled to be taken seriously. No one ever asked what kinds of films he wanted to make; they simply assumed his work was shallow entertainment. The family had developed a habit of calling him “Hollywood” and “Mr. Big Shot”—nicknames that carried more dismissal than affection.

On the day of the party, extended family members crowded the local park. When gift-opening time arrived, Samuel saved his present for last. The box was the perfect size for the vital camera equipment Carter needed. As everyone watched, Carter opened it to find a bright orange 1970s-style tuxedo with comically wide lapels. There was nothing else in the box.

“This is your outfit for when you go to the Oscars!” Samuel announced, prompting laughter from the gathered relatives.

In that moment, Carter felt his stomach drop—hurt by the deception, confused by why they would deliberately set up false expectations, and desperately worried about how he would now buy what he needed for his thesis. But years of conditioning kicked in. He smiled broadly, stood up, and modeled the ridiculous outfit for everyone’s amusement. The laughter that followed masked his internal collapse. No one acknowledged his disappointment, not even privately.

When Carter finally gathered the courage to express his hurt to his family the next day, Samuel’s eyes welled with tears. “I wanted to get you the equipment, but I just couldn’t afford it with the kids and everything. I thought the tuxedo would show that I believe in you—that I know you’ll make it to the Oscars someday.”

Carter found himself comforting his brother instead of addressing his own feelings. He left feeling guilty for even thinking Samuel would ever be able to afford giving him that gift. But something nagged at Carter: just one day before the party, Samuel had explicitly told him he would have everything he needed for his thesis after the birthday celebration, fully aware of the prank.

It took Carter decades to recognize the pattern of covert narcissism in his brother’s behavior. Even longer to reflect on that birthday party as an act of intentional humiliation. Only after going no contact with Samuel could Carter see how odd it was that his brother had orchestrated a birthday party when no one had thrown him one in nearly two decades—and how the public gift-opening had been crafted as a spectacle with Carter as the unwitting entertainment.

Understanding Existential Humiliation: The Tripping Metaphor

While existential shame involves internal beliefs about one’s inherent wrongness that develop over time, existential humiliation represents something different—and in many ways, more insidious.

Imagine walking confidently through a crowded room when someone deliberately trips you. As you fall, there’s that unmistakable moment of physical disequilibrium followed by the searing heat of embarrassment as all eyes turn to you. Your cheeks burn, your heart races, and you feel a desperate urge to disappear. Though you may have sustained real injuries—scrapes, bruises, even broken bones—others may only see your awkward tumble and assume you’re naturally clumsy or weren’t paying attention.

What makes this experience particularly devastating is that no one saw the person who tripped you. They maintain complete deniability while you’re left picking yourself up from the floor. If you try to explain what really happened, you risk appearing paranoid or like you’re making excuses. Over time, these experiences fundamentally change how you move through the world—you become hypervigilant, constantly scanning for potential hazards, never fully relaxed in public spaces. You may never walk with the same confidence again.

This is existential humiliation—a deliberate attack on your dignity and belonging that others either don’t recognize or actively deny. And like being tripped, we can never fully prevent others from attempting to humiliate us. What we can develop are strategies for catching ourselves more quickly when we start to fall, building networks of people who will help us up, and recognizing that these falls say nothing about our inherent worth or right to walk freely through the world.

With this metaphor in mind, let’s explore the specific characteristics that make humiliation so damaging, especially when it becomes existential in nature.

The Anatomy of Existential Humiliation

Existential humiliation has several distinguishing characteristics:

1. Intentional targeting of core identity

Unlike shame, which may develop without anyone’s deliberate action, humiliation involves someone intentionally targeting aspects of who you are. In Carter’s case, his identity as a serious filmmaker worthy of support was undermined, reinforcing a family narrative that positioned his educational pursuits as frivolous indulgences.

2. The social witness component

Humiliation almost always involves a social component—the real or perceived presence of witnesses. Carter’s humiliation was magnified by the extended family members watching as he opened the purposely misleading gift. The public nature of humiliation adds layers of damage, as it threatens one’s standing in the community.

3. Plausible deniability by the perpetrator

Perhaps most damaging is the common element of plausible deniability that often accompanies acts of existential humiliation. Samuel maintained an image of selflessness that made it impossible for Carter to call out the manipulation without seeming ungrateful or petty. The claim that the orange tuxedo was meant as encouragement for Carter’s future success provided perfect cover for what was actually a humiliating gesture.

4. The fawn response and forced performance of emotional labor

Victims of existential humiliation often find themselves engaging in a “fawn” response—a trauma response (alongside fight, flight, and freeze) where a person accommodates, appeases, and focuses on others’ needs while suppressing their own emotions. This manifests as performing emotional labor to manage the situation—comforting their abusers, putting on brave faces, or acting as though everything is fine.

Carter’s impromptu “fashion show” and later comforting of his brother exemplify this fawn response. This wasn’t merely people-pleasing but a survival strategy developed in environments where expressing authentic negative emotions was punished or dismissed. The fawn response serves multiple purposes: managing others’ emotions, staying personally safe, and preserving one’s social standing when more authentic responses might lead to further rejection or humiliation.

5. Long-term identity destabilization

What transforms a humiliating incident into existential humiliation is its power to destabilize one’s fundamental sense of self and place in the world. For Carter, this incident reinforced a lifetime of subtle messages that his pursuits were less valuable than his brother’s, his needs less important, and his feelings less valid.

The Neurobiological Impact

Neurobiological research has shown that experiences of humiliation activate the same brain regions as physical pain. When someone experiences existential humiliation, their brain processes it as a threat not just to their social standing but to their very survival. The fight-flight-freeze-fawn response activates, but in situations like Carter’s, social constraints eliminated the fight option (confronting Samuel would only reinforce the “ungrateful” narrative), the flight option (walking away would appear rude and dramatic), and even the freeze option (sitting silently would be interpreted as sulking). This left only the fawn response as viable—performing emotional labor to appease others while suppressing his authentic reaction.

This biological response helps explain why memories of humiliation can remain painfully vivid decades later. The brain flags these experiences as significant survival threats, encoding them with heightened emotional intensity. For survivors, the body may still carry the physiological signature of these experiences long after the events themselves.

What makes existential humiliation particularly insidious is that it often occurs right under the noses of witnesses who remain oblivious to what’s happening. The covert nature of these interactions—small, subtle acts with plausible deniability—means the target often stands alone in recognizing the deliberate nature of the humiliation. Examples of these subtle humiliations include:

• A family member “accidentally” revealing an embarrassing story at a gathering, then saying “Oh, I thought everyone knew that already”
• A colleague praising your work but attributing the best parts to someone else
• Someone repeatedly mispronouncing your name despite corrections, then laughing it off as “just so difficult”
• Being interrupted repeatedly in meetings, then told you’re “not assertive enough” when you mention it
• Having your dietary restrictions or health needs dismissed as “picky” or “high-maintenance”

When these experiences form a pattern, the damage compounds in ways that exceed simple addition. Each new incident reactivates and deepens previous wounds, creating a snowball effect where neural pathways become increasingly sensitive with repeated activation. The harm isn’t linear but exponential; ten small humiliations don’t create ten units of harm but rather multiply in impact, with each incident magnifying the effect of all previous ones. This explains why targets of repeated humiliation often appear to ‘overreact’ to what others perceive as minor incidents—they’re experiencing the cumulative weight of the entire pattern.

Families and the Normalization of Humiliation

One particularly damaging context for existential humiliation is within families, where harmful dynamics can be dismissed as normal or expected. When humiliating interactions are labeled as “just sibling rivalry” or “that’s how brothers are,” the target’s pain becomes invalidated before it can even be fully acknowledged.

Carter’s experience illustrates this pattern perfectly. His family had normalized the dynamic where his pursuits were treated as less valuable than his brother’s. The nicknames “Hollywood” and “Mr. Big Shot” weren’t seen as problematic but as harmless teasing. This normalization made it nearly impossible for Carter to recognize his experience as humiliation rather than just “how families are.”

The “can’t take a joke” defense is particularly common in family settings. When someone expresses hurt at humiliating treatment, they’re often told they’re “too sensitive” or “can’t take a joke,” effectively gaslighting them about their right to feel hurt. This invalidation becomes a second layer of humiliation—not only was the original experience painful, but their pain itself is framed as evidence of personal deficiency.

For children growing up in such environments, these normalized patterns of humiliation can become foundational to their sense of self and place in the world. A child who is regularly the butt of family jokes may develop a deep belief that they are somehow less worthy of dignity than others, even without being able to articulate this belief. The fact that these dynamics often occur within loving families where other needs are well met makes them particularly confusing to identify and heal.

Read the rest of this article with steps toward healing is in Ellen’s first book of her “There’s A Word for That” series: https://a.co/d/07i5yn1Q

Copyright Notice: This excerpt is from my book. All content is © 2025 Worldwide Groove Corporation. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or use of this material without permission is prohibited. Thank you for respecting my work. 😊

Photo Credit: Author – Additional Terms and disclaimers for images used in my posts on CPTSD Foundation.

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

How have you changed through healing?

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

Countless African households teach their children, from a very young age, to refrain from speaking. Phrases like “Just keep quiet,” or “Don’t cause trouble” echo through our lives, passed down as wisdom from those who came before us. On the surface, this advice seems mature and prudent.

Your quietness might damage your spirit instead of preserving love.

What if the very behaviors you learned to preserve calm (remaining silent, burying your emotions, and steering clear of conflict) are causing you to lose yourself?

People often misunderstand this route as a path to true tranquility. Over time, this lack of noise does not bring harmony; it breeds fear, resentment, rejection, and a deep, simmering anger.

Sometimes you observe yourself shrinking, evolving into a smaller version of who you were meant to be.

Your voice grows weaker until one day you wonder if you even have one.

This creeping feeling of inadequacy could cause you to distance from your true self, leading you to conclude that you’re not deserving of your own kindness and attention.

In many toxic homes, children grow into experts at appeasing their parents, sacrificing their own dreams, and even their happiness, just to feel accepted.

Guardians, especially mothers and wives, can become so consumed with caring for their families that their own ambitions and well-being slip away.

No matter where this people-pleasing or codependency begins, one truth remains: you cannot pour from an empty cup. One cannot share what one does not possess.

If you learned to swallow your feelings, and equate love with silence or relentless effort to win affection as a child, you set yourself on a path far from self-love.

We, as adults seeking love, often fall into cycles of codependency and people-pleasing, wherein we give, adapt, and sacrifice until our own identities become obscured.

This series will explore why so many of us become lost in our relationships, uncover the damaging habits forged in childhood, and examine how relying on others for validation traps us in harmful, normal cycles.

Suppositions and myths that lead to codependency.

My journey of recovering from childhood trauma led me to uncover a seldom-voiced truth:

So many of us stay in toxic relationships, sacrificing our true selves, because one persistent fear haunts us:

• What will people say?
• How will they see me?
• What will they think of me?

On the surface, you may appear cheerful and put together, but this silent fear eats away at us from the inside out.

Losing yourself in a relationship is never a sudden event. It’s a slow unraveling, thread by thread, until one day you barely recognize who you’ve become.

It seeps in through your self-perception, what you learned about love, and the patterns you witnessed as a child.

The way your caregivers expressed love during your childhood matters. The language you experienced as a child plays an important role.

The examples set by those around you– the words they spoke–these moments leave lasting imprints.

Many of us grew up with beliefs like:

“You have to endure in a relationship.”

“All men cheat” or “Women are not trustworthy.”

“One person must lead, the other must submit.”

“Two captains cannot be on one ship.”

These repeated messages, so common they feel like truth, become beliefs that shape our entire approach to love and connection.

Instead of teaching us that love is rooted in self-respect and boundaries, they condition us to see love as endless sacrifice.

My Personal Realization: When Love Meant Losing Myself

There was a chapter in my life when I truly believed that silence equaled love.
I thought that putting everyone else’s needs before my own was the highest form of love. My happiness, I thought, should be a reflection of everyone else’s contentment.

I felt responsible for everyone–except myself.

I became the fixer, the peacekeeper, always trying to make things work. It was the only way I knew to feel needed, valued, and loved.

But as I walked the long road to healing, I discovered something that changed everything:

Those were not acts of love at all.
They were trauma responses, survival patterns etched deep by years of emotional wounds.

That realization hurt, but it was also a turning point. It was the first time I began to see what true self-love could look like.

Many believe self-love is about occasional pampering, buying nice things, taking selfies, or treating yourself.

But real self-love runs much deeper; it’s about how we show up for ourselves every single day.

So What Is Codependency? (Simple Explanation)

Let’s break this down in a real, honest way, because so many are living it, even if they don’t yet have the word.

Codependency is when your sense of identity, worth, and emotional stability becomes tethered to someone else. You feel responsible for healing or fixing them, even when it breaks you in the process.

It means:

• You depend on others to feel okay about yourself.
• Your happiness is based on how they feel about you.
• You feel responsible for their emotions.
• You prioritize their needs above your own

You say words like:

“If they are happy, then I am okay.”

“If they are upset, I feel like I have done something wrong.”

“I need to fix things so everything can be okay again.”

“If I don’t do anything, things will fall apart.”

“I have to be there for them; I cannot fail them.”

“I am not enough; I need to get them to love me.”

Your life begins to revolve around someone else’s emotions, fulfilling their needs, fixing their problems, helping them, and seeking their approval to feel fulfilled.

You go the extra mile to make them happy, even if it means sacrificing your own happiness, your dreams, or even your identity.

You may dim your light so theirs can shine.

At that point, you no longer feel good enough on your own; you need their approval to feel secure.

It’s like walking through life uncovered, giving your last coat to everyone else, satisfied because they are warm, even as you shiver in the cold.

In simple terms:
Codependency is this: losing yourself, piece by piece, in your desperate attempt to hold on to someone else.

What Is People-Pleasing?

People-pleasing is the behavior that keeps codependency going.

It is when you constantly try to make others happy, even at your own expense.

It looks like:

• Saying “yes” when you want to say “no.”
• Keeping quiet to avoid conflict
• Ignoring your own needs so others can feel comfortable.
• Feeling guilty for putting yourself first
• Trying to be “good” so people will accept or love you.

In simple terms:
People-pleasing is what happens when you abandon your own needs, just to feel accepted by others.

What Is True Self-Love?

Self-love is not just pampering, taking pictures, or buying things.

Self-love is how you treat yourself on a daily basis.

It means:

• You respect your own feelings and needs.
• You don’t ignore yourself to please others.
• You speak up for yourself, even when it’s uncomfortable.
• You protect your peace without guilt.
• You choose what is healthy for you, not just what makes others happy.

In simple terms:
Self-love is choosing yourself, wholly and unapologetically, without shame or guilt.

How Codependency Makes You Lose Yourself in Relationships

No one wakes up and decides to lose themselves. It’s a slow process, rooted in what we were taught about love and worthiness.

1. Perhaps you were taught that love means enduring; no matter the cost.

You learned to tolerate instead of express.
To stay silent instead of speaking.

• You Start Living for Approval.

Your focus shifts from “Who am I?” to “How can I be accepted?” due to past painful experiences.

Maybe someone left you in the past, you grew up in a home where love was inconsistent, or someone hurt you deeply, and you still carry that wound or memory in your heart.

These old wounds shape how you see yourself, making you live for approval instead of embracing who you truly are.

• You feel responsible for everyone but yourself.

You carry everyone’s emotions, but neglect your own. You feel responsible for making everyone happy and for everything running smoothly, and that without you, they cannot be happy or okay.

Children who grew up taking adult responsibilities at a younger age are prone to this. So, in a relationship, they believe it is their responsibility to change every weakness and negative thing they see in their partner.

They become the parent in the relationship rather than a partner. They scold, complain, cry, and nag.

They stay in a toxic relationship, enduring, praying when they ought to walk away, and loving themselves.

Many will say, “Maybe if I behaved better, he or she would change.”

• You Confuse Being Needed with Being Loved.

You start to believe your value lies only in how much you can help, fix, or sacrifice for others.

Many struggle to break free from this cycle because the approval feels like a drug, without it, they don’t feel whole or enough. At the root of it all are unhealed trauma wounds, waiting to be faced.

• You Stop Listening to Yourself.

You stop asking what you feel, need, or want, and focus only on others.

What Is True Self-Love?

People pleasing is what you do.

Codependency is the pattern you are stuck in

Lack of self-love is the root of it all.

When you lack self-love, you:

• Seek validation from others.
• Struggle with boundaries
• Feel responsible for people’s emotions.

And so, the cycle repeats until you decide to break it.

You Don’t Have to Lose Yourself to Be Loved: A New Way Forward

Losing yourself in a relationship is not love, it’s a pattern called codependency. And you are not alone in it.

It is something many people learned from their upbringing, environment, and experiences.

But here’s the good news: you can unlearn these patterns.

• You can learn to love without losing yourself.
  You can learn to speak without fear.
  You can learn to exist fully in your relationships.

Start small today:

Speak up in one situation.

Say “no” without guilt.

Choose yourself in one decision.

Because the moment you choose to stop abandoning yourself…
That’s when you reclaim your power, and your healing truly begins.
This is Part 1 of the Codependency Series.

Let this be your first step toward becoming your most authentic, empowered self. Your best days are ahead!

In the next article, we’ll go deeper into codependency, childhood trauma, and narcissistic relationships, how they are all connected, and why many people find themselves repeating the same painful patterns.

Stay with me on this journey; understanding is the very first step toward healing.

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer

The invisible wound

When people think about childhood trauma, they might imagine bruises from physical abuse, scars on skin that remain red and thick, stories of children left alone to fend for themselves without food or comfort, or various forms of sexual assault.

Many children grow up in homes where their basic needs are met, and they aren’t beaten or sexually assaulted, but they grow up with chronic belittling, nit-picking, and criticism. For those parents, nothing is ever quite good enough, and the child is reminded of it regularly. When the young one tries to achieve or perform to please the parent, it’s followed by a parental judgment or correction. The parent reminds the child of what they missed, lack, or didn’t do right.

As a child, I learned at a very young age that I was not measuring up to my mother’s expectations. When I was younger, it started out with my physical appearance. My mother was born a small person, with small bone structure, which kept her petite all her life. While I was short, I had a very different structure. It seemed to me like my creator was confused, thinking I needed to be built like a linebacker as a 5-foot 4-inch female.

That difference displeased my mother, and I could not measure up to her physical expectations of me. For her, grades and academic performance were irrelevant compared to how I looked or behaved, because what other people thought meant more than my own achievements outside of having a “perfect” body.

As I aged, I was reminded even more regularly that my body just did not measure up, and her expectations (outside of academics) were that I took care of all household chores. Even when I was working two jobs and going to school, while earning good grades, if the house wasn’t spic and span, I was punished. My brother had no expectations laid upon him. I consistently disappointed my mother, and nothing I could do could earn her praise, except the time that I lost 30 pounds. Her praise then was endless, albeit temporary, as the weight came back.

Over time, the child learns a valuable but painful lesson: “I am only as valuable as my performance,” or “I am only valuable if I meet the expectations my parents have of me.”  For many adults living with complex trauma, the wound isn’t what the parent did to them; it was what the parent repeatedly said.

What does an overly critical parent look like?

A healthy parent teaches their children. They use constructive criticism and redirection if the child needs it, and do so with the goal of helping and nurturing the child’s growth. On the contrary, overly critical parents do not teach; they evaluate. They judge.

Common patterns look like: constant fault-finding, unrealistically high expectations, rare or non-existent praise or acknowledgment, comparing a child to their siblings, dismissing emotions or shutting down the child’s emotions, labeling their children (lazy, dramatic, difficult, ungrateful), and focusing on mistakes and overlooking successes and efforts to please the parent. The message is explicit or implied: “You could have done better.”

Why chronic criticism is so harmful

Children develop their sense of self through their relationship with their caregivers. When their caregivers repeatedly communicate disappointment, rejection, or conditional acceptance, children often internalize those messages as truths about themselves.

Research suggests that persistent parental criticism can contribute to negative self-image, depression, anxiety, and difficulty with emotional regulation (Spinazzola et al., 2014). Harsh and rejecting parental behaviors are also linked to increased psychological distress and poorer mental health outcomes (Cruz, et al., 2022). Children aren’t simply hearing criticism–they are building their identities around it.

The adult child’s hidden beliefs

Many adults raised by highly critical parents continue carrying harmful, unconscious beliefs like: I must earn love; my worth depends on what I do or accomplish; mistakes are dangerous; other people’s needs matter more than mine; I am responsible for maintaining my family’s peace; if I just try harder, I will finally be enough.

When criticism becomes trauma

Trauma is shaped by what happened to someone repeatedly. Developmental trauma research suggests that chronic interpersonal stressors in caregiving relationships can alter the way people handle their emotions, their self-concept, attachment patterns, and social functioning. Psychological maltreatment, which is what chronic criticism is, has been associated with depression, anxiety, shame, dissociation and relationship difficulties (Lippard & Nemeroff, 2020).

Chronic parental criticism, emotional abuse, and harsh parenting are also associated with increased risk for emotional distress, adverse childhood experiences, and substance use problems. For some people who grow up in this environment, alcohol or drugs become a way to cope with the pain of feeling perpetually inadequate, rejected, or unseen (Felitti et al., 1998).

Sometimes trauma looks less like a single event and more like thousands of moments that communicate to the child, “who you are is not enough.”

Why adult children keep trying to earn approval and what happens later

One of the most painful realities for children who grow up with chronic criticism is that the pursuit of parental approval carries long into adulthood. These children grow up to be high achievers, caregivers, helpers, people-pleasers, and perfectionists. They hope that enough success, sacrifice, and service will finally produce the validation they long for, yet many discover that the goalposts continue to move.

Adults who are raised by chronically critical parents might find themselves in relationships with people who do the same thing to them, because it feels like home. It’s familiar. They go from one unhealthy environment into another and maintaining a healthy relationship is difficult when they choose unhealthy partners (Vaillancourt-Morel et al., 2024).

The adult child might struggle with perfectionism, fear of failure, self-doubt, difficulty setting boundaries (especially with the parents), anxiety, depression, sensitivity to criticism (overreacting to it), and relationship problems (Kuo et al., 2011).

They may keep trying to prove their worth                     

One of the most common patterns is over-functioning that looks like becoming: the helper, the fixer, the provider, and/or the caretaker. This happens not because their partner demands it, but because that’s what the adult child learned:  contribution is how they secure connection. However, their healthy partner might say, “you do not have to earn your place here,” but the adult child doesn’t know how not to do that.

The adult child might have difficulty needing anything from their partner because receiving feels vulnerable. If their healthy partner offers comfort, support, or help, they might feel guilty, indebted, weak, or exposed. The adult child might react strongly, in a negative way, becoming defensive or even angry because they learned early that needing someone felt dangerous.

References

Cruz, D., Lichten, M., Berg, K., & George, P. (2022). Developmental trauma: Conceptual framework, associated risks and comorbidities, and evaluation and treatment. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, Article 800687. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.800687

Felitti, Vincent J., Anda, Robert F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., Koss, M. P., & Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(98)00017-8

Kuo, J. R., Goldin, P. R., Werner, K., Heimberg, R. G., & Gross, J. J. (2011). Childhood trauma and current psychological functioning in adults with social anxiety disorder. Journal of anxiety disorders, 25(4), 467–473. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2010.11.011

Lippard, E. T. C., & Nemeroff, C. B. (2020). The Devastating Clinical Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect: Increased Disease Vulnerability and Poor Treatment Response in Mood Disorders. The American journal of psychiatry, 177(1), 20–36. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.19010020

Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Godbout, N., Bigras, N., Sabourin, S., & Bergeron, S. (2024). Partner effects of childhood maltreatment: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 25(2), 1323–1343. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231173427

Photo Credit: Unsplash

Guest Post Disclaimer: This guest post is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing shared here, across CPTSDfoundation.org, any CPTSD Foundation website, our associated communities, or our Social Media accounts, is intended to substitute for or supersede the professional advice and direction of your medical or mental health providers. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the guest author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPTSD Foundation. For further details, please review the following: Terms of Service, Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer