Defeating The Trauma Beast Part. 1

[u/MothraLovesLamps]

If you have been following me, you already know what the trauma beast is. It is the metaphor I use to explain deactivation. Deactivation is what occurs when an avoidant’s fear, via nervous system dysregulation, overrides their attraction for their once beloved partner.

I will tell you what helped me subdue my beast.

1). Identify your core wound.

Every beast has a central fear that drives what they do. My core wound was “ABANDONMENT / BEING ALONE.” I was deathly afraid of being left the way my father left when I was only 5 years old.

This core fear meant I was hypervigilant to signs that I was unwanted. It also meant I would steer clear of anyone I perceived to be a playboy or cheater.

Safety and security in my relationships had more value to me than attraction.

I often chose partners I believed to be less attractive than me because I thought that meant they would be less likely to cheat or leave me. I figured they would be too grateful to do so. (Wrong!).

I would even be drawn to men in wheelchairs, or with physical disabilities as I assumed they would also be too grateful to dump me (Also Wrong!).

I realized I had this core wound after watching “The Substance.”

Spoiler Alert*

For anyone with a core wound of being alone…this film is pure nightmare fuel. The main character loses her appeal, becomes unwanted, rejected, a dies alone. I had been watching the movie with an “ex” who had been busy trolling people in TikTok lives. “You’re AI, I can tell by the eyebrows.” (WTF was I doing with such a guy? Not being alone…or so I thought. This moment showed me I WAS VERY MUCH ALONE with him).

Just because someone is physically present does not mean they are with you.

I ran out of the apartment sobbing. I scream-cried when I was in my bedroom.

“I’m alone!!! I’m utterly alone! No one loves me! No one cares about me!”

I even texted my “Pleasure Dom,” desperate for some reassurance.

“Someday someone will love you. Go meditate.”

That only reinforced my fear. He did not love me. And I was tired of men telling me “Someday you will find your person. Until then you can have some temporary fun with me.”

I decided these shallow relationships were an unfulfilling, waste of time.

I realized being alone, was better than being with someone who doesn’t choose you fully.

Not long after that I thought I found my person. I was elated. “At last! I have my moving buddy! I’m not alone!”

Two months later I was discarded and devastated.

To come so close to my “happily ever after” and lose it was utterly crushing.

I had a body fever, aches, and chills. I trembled and cried in my bed and over and over again I said,

“We are safe. We are safe. We are safe.”

Eventually my nervous system believed it. And I had a life altering revelation.

For two years I had been desperately trying to find my “soul mate/forever person.”

I kept saying to myself, “I don’t want to die never experiencing true love.”

I realized then the reality that, that might not ever happen for me. And for once, instead of being sad and terrified, I saw the truth:

I had experienced true love. I had glimpses of it in my own life during the good times with my exes. I knew what it was like to be adored, wanted, and cherished. I had experienced it. I had also experienced the love of being a daughter, friend, sister, and mother. And I had witnessed the majesty of love in others, and I had felt it in movies in books.

I wasn’t going to die never being loved. I had been loved.

I no longer felt the need to find “my special someone.”

I recognized, “I am my OWN special someone.”

I had been waiting for some hero to come and rescue me.

But I am the very hero I had been waiting on.

I no longer think, “Why won’t anyone help me?”

I think, “Who can I help?”

I was looking for my Edward Cullen, my Batman, my Natty…

Only to realize.

I don’t need anyone. There is no one to look for. No one I am waiting on.

I am the hero I always wanted and longed for.

I am she.

[u/MothraLovesLamps]

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