When the Trap Doesn’t Look Like a Trap

I thought once I left my family, I was free.

I thought surviving the emotional chaos—the lies, the manipulation, the betrayal—meant I’d never be controlled again.

That I’d earned clarity. That I’d know the signs. That I’d never lose myself like that again.

But trauma doesn’t just teach us what to avoid.

It also teaches us what feels familiar.

And familiarity is tricky.

Because it can sound like comfort.

It can look like love.

And sometimes… it feels like home.

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He didn’t come in throwing punches.

He came in calm. Measured.

He praised my insight. Mirrored my language. Told me how rare I was.

And then, little by little, he began to untangle me from myself.

He’d say things like:

“You only think this is unhealthy because of your childhood.”

“I know I have my flaws, but at least I had good parents. You didn’t.”

“You don’t always know what’s right or wrong—that’s trauma talking.”

And because I’ve done the work—because I help others make sense of how their past shapes their present—I listened.

I wanted to grow.

I wanted to stay open.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t projecting old pain onto something new.

And in doing so, I betrayed the most important relationship I had:

The one with my own gut.

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Science Break

Trauma doesn’t just live in memory. It lives in the nervous system.

According to researchers like Bessel van der Kolk, Judith Herman, and Stephen Porges, the brain prioritizes predictability over safety. We are biologically wired to return to what’s familiar—even if it hurt us—because the body believes, “If I survived it once, I can survive it again.”

This is why survivors of emotional abuse often find themselves in relationships that echo the past, even when they know better on a conscious level.

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What I didn’t realize then—but can name now—is this:

He wasn’t helping me grow. He was grooming me to doubt myself.

The corrections didn’t feel like control.

They felt like logic. Like nuance. Like “honesty.”

Until I found myself shrinking.

Avoiding. Apologizing.

Questioning whether my intuition was trauma or truth.

And here’s the part that still hurts to admit:

I knew better.

I teach this stuff.

I’ve sat with clients—brilliant, tender, trauma-surviving clients—and helped them walk out of relationships just like the one I was in.

So when I realized I was in it too, the shame was crushing.

I felt like a fraud.

Like maybe I wasn’t fit to help anyone.

Like maybe I’d missed something essential in myself.

But here’s the truth I hold now:

Healing isn’t a finish line.

It’s a practice.

And being a healer doesn’t mean you’ll never need to be rescued—from yourself, from your past, or from a new form of the same old pain.

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Looking back, I can see the pattern clearly.

He didn’t rescue me from my trauma.

He used it as a map.

He studied my triggers, my self-doubt, my deepest ache to feel loved without being destroyed.

And then he made himself look like the answer.

Until I started shrinking in the name of staying.

Until I convinced myself that discomfort meant growth—when really, it meant I was disappearing.

That’s what emotional gaslighting does.

It doesn’t break you all at once.

It edits you… slowly… until you forget who you were before you started asking for permission to be yourself.

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To the woman who’s doubting herself:

You are not broken.

You are not stupid.

You are not repeating your past because you haven’t healed.

You are revisiting it with new eyes—and sometimes, the lesson only clicks when you walk it in your own shoes.

You can be a work in progress and a guide.

You can be a helper who still sometimes forgets how to help herself.

You can be the woman who said, “Never again,” and still found herself there again.

And it doesn’t mean you failed.

It means you’re still here. And still learning. And still worth saving.

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Leaving my family taught me what boundaries look like.

This relationship taught me what emotional erasure feels like.

And healing—real healing—has taught me this:

Freedom isn’t just walking away from the fire.

It’s learning to recognize the fog.

The kind that creeps in quiet…

that makes you question your footing…

and convinces you the smoke is your fault.

But it never was.

P.S. You are not alone.