Here I sit, once again, tormenting myself, trying to understand why someone would choose to treat me the way they did. These feelings come up from time to time, even from people and events deep from my past that I thought I’d forgiven and done my best to forget. I find myself tortured with the same question: how could they?
Why do I do this to myself? Perhaps, more importantly, why do we do this to ourselves. You know the collective we I’m referring to.
We are the over-thinkers, the people-pleasers, the chronically-concerned that perhaps we did something impolite without being consciously aware of it. We move weirdly, constantly watching the ground to make sure there are no toes we may inadvertently tread upon. We worry, perhaps all the time, that we have done something wrong—that we, in fact, are the problem.
We are, as you’ve gathered, the traumatized. Our stories range from those of severe, long-lasting, and unconscionable abuse, to those of subtle, covert trauma in the form of death by a thousand tiny cuts. Something that likely unites all of our stories is the presence of gaslighting and manipulation—the grotesque way that villains from our stories managed to convince us that they didn’t do the things we thought they did. If they did do them, it wasn’t as bad as we said it was. And if it was as bad as we said it was, then it was probably our fault.
Over time, we learned to believe them.
Now, no matter how far we’ve distanced ourselves from those villains and how many chapters we’ve brought to an end, we can’t seem to shake the old habits of self-blame. We think we have. We tell ourselves that because we no longer instantly assume that we are to blame, that must mean we have healed and moved on. But, for a lot of us, we’ve just found a new outlet for that energy.
For me, and likely for you, too, if you’ve made it this far, that energy now shows up in an obsession with understanding why they treated me the way they did. I can’t let it go. I turn it over in my mind day and night, searching for any plausible explanation for their behavior. It consumes me.
It only recently occurred to me that this is just a rebranding of my old trauma response. I’m looking for an answer for why they did what they did because there is a small part, buried deep down, niggling at my brain telling me that I’ll always be the one to blame. If I can just identify a reason why the other person is at fault and not me—if I can point and say, “Aha! This is why!”—then that part will finally shut up.
Making this realization was sickening to me. I don’t want to live this way anymore, and, in fact, I can’t. I am no less imprisoned by the people who tormented me than I was when they were still in my life if I continue to let the habits I learned to survive them rule me today.
So, I’m done being curious about why they did what they did. It’s no longer a mystery or a puzzle for me to solve. They treated me in a way that I would have never treated them, no matter how justified I felt in doing so, and that’s all the explanation I need.
Maybe they did it because of their own unhealed trauma and need someone to show them empathy and understanding. That’s fine—that person can’t be me.
Maybe they did it because no one ever taught them better ways to treat people and someone needs to guide them toward healthier behaviors. That’s good—but that can’t be my responsibility.
And maybe they did it because they’re unrepentant ass holes who have treated everyone who came before me that way, and will continue to treat everyone after me that way. That’s terribly sad—but also not my problem. I can’t be responsible for the rehabilitation of the people from whom I had to be rehabilitated. And I can’t be concerned over whether someone is stepping up to the task.
This is me being blissfully, unapologetically, done. I encourage you to do the same.
Amber Wardell is a doctor of psychology and author who speaks on women’s issues related to marriage, motherhood, and mental health. Subscribe to the free newsletter to get exclusive content delivered to your inbox and to never miss an upload.
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