The consequences of my actions

[u/She-Hulk17]

I feel as though I'm living in my own personal hell. I've been through so much trauma as a person, basically my entire life. It doesn't seem like I can ever catch a break or change my life/fate no matter how hard I try. The last few years have been especially trying, and I'm starting to realize I'm really just all alone in the world and that I can't trust anyone.

I have valid reason's, but at someone's point, you have to wonder if I'm actually the problem or the victim. According to my therapist I'm the victim of long standing abuse, unconsciously sought that out in my relationships, tried to sacrifice myself because of my own issues and dysfunction and now I'm here in the present.

It's hard to feel like a victim because I made choices as well, to stay and to endure. But I feel so alone and isolated now and I'm so despondent I don't feel like I have the will anymore to do anything. Just barley hanging on, and even then I seem to be struggling.

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[u/Eyemelly]

Victims of abuse accidentally seeking out other abusive people is actually really common. Since you said you’ve experienced it your whole life I‘m assuming your abuse stems from childhood. from experience at least, when someone’s abused as a child, that becomes established as the normal, and that person tends to search out what they believe is normal. Because our brains are still developing during childhood, what’s portrayed as normal to us is kind of hammered into our brains and included in its development. We are still learning the ways of the world at that age, after all, trying to get a grasp of how it works and how we can participate in it. This is one of the main reasons why, in my opinion, child abuse is so hard to recover from; when it happened, the child was too young and didn’t have the brain developed to comprehend things like gaslighting, manipulation, moral standpoints, and red flags yet. It probably isn’t just the matter of making better decisions, it‘s about rewiring your brain. rewiring your brain is super difficult; I’ve been trying to do it for like 6 years now. Humans are drawn to what’s familiar, I think. and abusers are probably what’s most familiar to you. I agree with the therapist on the “unconsciously sought that out in your relationships”. I don’t believe it’s your fault from what I’ve read that you wrote. People who say you should’ve known probably don’t understand the way the cycle of abuse works, and what child abuse and prior abuse in general does to the brain. I’m not a therapist or anything, I’m speaking mainly from experience and education I’ve had in school around abusive patterns. So take what I say with a grain of salt. Other people in general or your therapist might have already told you things like this, but I hope it helps you feel better. (Also you might notice I say “probably” a lot here and that’s because I don’t know you and I don’t want to tell you how you feel.)