When core beliefs are taken advantage of

There’s this pattern I see played out all the time.

I see people who have their stress responses used for others to avoid accountability for their own behaviour.

I see it happen with children and emotionally immature parents, I see it happen in the education system- particularly with neurodivergent children and staff and I see it happen in abusive relationship.

 I see how the stage is set in childhood for abusive and toxic relationships to occur, and for the purpose of this blog post thats the dynamic I’ll be referencing. It’s not just for romantic relationships, it happens in work places with collegues, in friendships and with family members.

 The people who are presenting with high levels of distress are more often than not, incredibly vulnerable.

They react to someone’s mistreatment of them with a fight or flight response and that response is then used against them.

 They’re shamed by the other for how they reacted and they experience shame themselves. This takes away the need for the other person to own up to their role in creating the distress the other experienced in the first place.

Fight or flight behaviours emerge from a nervous system that is in protection mode, a nervous system that is picking up on overwhelming cues of danger and reacts accordingly.

 We’re conditioned very early on to view stress reactions as bad. The child who lashes out, the child who throws things in anger, the child who screams and stamps their feet, the child who runs from their angry caregiver. They’re scolded and punished, they’re not given the benefit of the doubt. They’re not seen as a child overwhelmed by their own nervous system response to emotions they don’t have the developmental ability to regulate. They’re instead seen as ‘naughty’, ‘out of control’, ‘manipulative’, ‘bad’.

 In our culture children are still seen very much as small adults with impossible expectations for emotional regulation placed on them. When children fail to meet these expectations they experience the sting of rejection, a pain that settles deep into their core. These micro rejections create beliefs such as 

I’m not lovable when I’m angry’, ‘I’m an awful person when I behave this way’, ‘I’m not worthy of understanding and support when I’m having a hard time’.

 It’s easy to see how, with these beliefs firmly installed these children grow into adults who do not recognise when someone is mistreating them. They do not recognise that their reaction is not an indication of their awfulness but is actually an indication that they are in an unhealthy situation, one that is causing them to feel  unsafe.

Without this insight they’re not able to put in place the actions needed to return to safety, instead they see only their only failings.

They blame themselves for being hard work, impossible to be with, dramatic, overly sensitive and feel disgust for themselves and sympathy for the other person who’s having to endure them.

It’s no wonder then that so many stay in relationships that are harming them.