Gettyimages.com/Portrait of young woman standing in front yard on summer evening
I want to start this rather sensitive post by saying that I am someone who used to blame my trauma on my bad behavior. I’ve mentioned it before in previous posts but, for new readers, here it is: when I was 15 I overheard my father having rather graphic phone sex with his mistress. I had to break the news to my mother that he was having an affair. And as more lies (and subsequent truths) came to light, we discovered that not only did he have a mistress, he also had an entire secret second family, apart from that mistress. I’m talking about a second mortgage, second home, second set of tuitions for a second set of kids…the whole thing. A second secret life. And for years, I was very angry at men. I was verbally abusive to everyone I dated. I was on a mission to destroy male self-esteem. I was a bad friend, too, because I was so obsessed with my trauma and the things I wanted to do because of it that I neglected my friends. And then I realized that…I wasn’t happy. I didn’t like my life. It turns out that spreading the anger I was feeling inside, out into the world, didn’t result in some healthy, fulfilling life. Who woulda thunk? So, here is why you, too, can’t blame your trauma on your behavior.
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You can’t undo the past
So you’ve identified that this incident in your past triggered a series of behaviors that have yielded negative results in your life. Okay. So, now what? Identifying that incident doesn’t erase it. You don’t get gold stars for knowing you have trauma. Knowing about it is not the same as addressing it.
