I Almost Self-Sabotaged My Healthy Relationship

Last weekend, I met my boyfriend’s family for the first time. All was well until we said our goodbyes, and his mother accidentally ended her sentence with the fatal words…" Dom and Vicky…”

Cue Oh No Tiktok music…She just called me his ex's name...I was triggered.

The emotions that resurfaced were my past traumas of being invalidated by my toxic ex’s family...feeling invisible...and the one word that is my personal thief of joy...unworthiness.

I immediately spiraled into a sea of unworthiness and had a full-blown PTSD episode on the car ride home from DC to NYC...There were tears, disassociation, and silence from me.

I began to feel unworthy and undeserving of a healthy partner...the repeated thoughts cycling in my mind that I eventually told my boyfriend was, “You deserve to be with someone who didn’t experience trauma.”

To which he responded, “Your reaction to trauma triggers is not your fault. Trauma is not your fault, and you're worthy of love.”

I immediately recognized my thoughts as self-sabotaging.

He's right. We are all worthy of a healthy relationship whether or not we’ve endured trauma.

Even though I’ve done so much therapy work to heal wounds caused by my tumultuous relationship, triggers remain like scars and can be activated at any time by any random thing.

You will feel emotions that will take you back to an event you overcame...but it doesn’t mean you’re going backward on your healing. It’s just a sign that you have a wound that needs to be tended to.

I learned from the trigger that my wound was to continue to work through my feelings of unworthiness. My reaction felt so large for a small mistake that I immediately knew it to be a trauma response. It was a fight for safety in any way I knew...to abandon a situation before it abandoned me. This is toxic behavior that no longer serves me.

It’s okay to be still healing and be in a relationship.

The presence of trauma in your past does not mean you are unworthy of happiness, safety, and security.

We heal through relationships that bring us all of those things.

Sincerely,

Mary

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