If you grew up as the scapegoat, your nervous system didn’t develop around safety, it developed around anticipation. Scapegoating is a family dynamic where one child becomes the container for blame, tension, and unprocessed emotion. Responsibility is unclear. Anger is indirect. Safety is conditional. So your body adapts. It learns to scan the environment. It learns to notice shifts in tone. It learns to act before anything actually happens. Not because you’re perceptive. But because unpredictability once came with consequences. That’s why calm can feel unsettling. Your nervous system associates quiet with what comes next. These patterns aren’t personality traits. They’re survival responses. And they don’t have to be permanent. Therapies like EMDR work with the nervous system, not just the story. They help the body process experiences that taught it to stay alert, so safety no longer depends on vigilance. #scapegoat #trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery
You can want closeness and still feel panicked when someone actually stays. For many trauma survivors, this isn’t ambivalence or “mixed signals”. It’s a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. When early relation
You can want closeness and still feel panicked when someone actually stays. For many trauma survivors, this isn’t ambivalence or “mixed signals”. It’s a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. When early relationships were unpredictable, overwhelming, or emotionally unsafe, closeness became something you had to manage. You learned to stay alert. To monitor shifts. To brace for withdrawal, anger, or abandonment. So when someone stays - consistently, calmly, without conditions, it can feel unfamiliar rather than comforting. The absence of threat doesn’t automatically register as safety. It can register as uncertainty. This is why intimacy after trauma can feel destabilising before it feels soothing. Not because you don’t want connection, but because your body learned that closeness required vigilance. Over time, through relational experiences and treatments like EMDR, your nervous system can learn something new: that connection doesn’t have to be earned, monitored, or survived and that staying present in closeness can be safe. If this resonates, there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s history here. And it makes sense. #trauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #ptsd
Growing up with unmet emotional needs often teaches children one quiet rule: don’t need too much. So you learn to stay small, stay agreeable, and stay alert because attention and attunement were the only way to remain connected. In adulthood,
Growing up with unmet emotional needs often teaches children one quiet rule: don’t need too much. So you learn to stay small, stay agreeable, and stay alert because attention and attunement were the only way to remain connected. In adulthood, this often shows up as hypervigilance, people-pleasing, fear of conflict, and abandoning your own needs - even in safe relationships. This isn’t weakness. It’s a nervous system shaped by emotional inconsistency and neglect. Healing isn’t about forcing confidence or “better communication.” It’s about helping the body learn, over time, that your needs are allowed to exist and still be met. #childhoodtrauma #traumahealing #traumarecovery #trauma #healing
If you grew up as the scapegoat, your nervous system didn’t develop around safety, it developed around anticipation. Scapegoating is a family dynamic where one child becomes the container for blame, tension, and unprocessed emotion. Responsibi
You can want closeness and still feel panicked when someone actually stays. For many trauma survivors, this isn’t ambivalence or “mixed signals”. It’s a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. When early relation Growing up with unmet emotional needs often teaches children one quiet rule: don’t need too much. So you learn to stay small, stay agreeable, and stay alert because attention and attunement were the only way to remain connected. In adulthood,