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What happens when we trust others more than ourselves

Hint: This is how abusers find us

Sarah Kat
4 min readOct 12, 2021
Photo by Filipp Romanovski on Unsplash

It’s common knowledge among abuse survivors that having been a victim of abuse in childhood, very often means we endure more of the same as adults. But why is that?

Is it that we look for familiarity, perhaps subconsciously?

Is it that abusers, particularly narcissistic ones, can spot a well-trained victim a mile off?

Or how about the fact that abuse survivors value themselves so low that they will accept more bad in a partner than others perhaps would?

I think it’s all of the above, plus this…

When we grow up with the message that we are less than, we tend not to trust ourselves. When we are constantly sold the idea that we get everything wrong, or aren’t worthy of love, we learn that we are a failure.

So, of course, when it comes to listening to our intuition about the relationships in our life, we are prone to valuing that other person more.

Their wishes, their opinions and their way of doing things. We default to their way, because our way is probably wrong. We cannot trust ourselves, we were taught not to, so we must trust the other person instead.

Trusting others more than…

Sarah Kat
Sarah Kat

Written by Sarah Kat

Self help, neuropsychology, small business and marketing. An Elective Orphan and abuse survivor. https://bit.ly/highlights-email

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I was just explaining to someone how I thought everyone knew better than me. I used to do the things you mention. Got me in some bad situations. Great article!

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