Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
Love before consequences, and learning, not punishment, are goals of parents who create secure attachment for their offspring.
Laura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
I will never blame you for living with the consequences of someone’s inability to give you the attachment experiences that all humans need. One small and very powerful thing to do here is to let yourself be a beginner.
Laura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
Conflict is contact. Avoidance of conflict is avoidance of connection. Conflict also sucks. You have to continuously practice skills of emotion regulation, self-soothing, and interrupting the narratives that attempt to turn distress with each other into evidence that there is a price for this relationship.
Laura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
Because you were taught to believe that connections were fragile and that you were expendable, it can feel almost intolerable to be in conflict with someone you care about.
Laura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
But survivors of childhoods in one of the circles of hell have learned to assume that emotional life is full of interpersonal earthquake/hurricane/tornados coming, if not every second, then right around the corner.
Laura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
You give up on what you want in a relationship with a person who, as it turns out, is perfectly willing to discuss a compromise, even if they’re not happy about it.
Laura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
A child raised by depleted caregivers expects the not-very-much that those exhausted parents have available. Kids from these families are likely to internalize a version of the world in which needing something is burdensome to others. If that’s your story, you’ve developed strategies for being hyper-autonomous and needing no one. You’ve created a
... See moreLaura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
The relationships you deserve never require you to systemically ignore that something is wrong or dissociate from your discomfort. If you insist on honesty, transparency, and integrity from people with whom you have relationships, you will not be alone in the world forever. The stark reality is that when you are in what looks like a relationship
... See moreLaura S. Brown • Not the price of admission: Healthy relationships after childhood trauma
If you can’t safely tell someone “no” because they will do something to you that endangers your welfare, then that person is probably not safe to have in your life.