To understand why you stop thinking about trauma as traumatic if you go through a lot of trauma I’m going to a lunch analogy.
Say you eat ham and chocolate sandwiches for lunch. Not every day, but maybe, 4-5 times a month. You hate them. But you eat them so often you get used to them. And maybe in the beginning you rebel, and say I hate ham and chocolate I don’t want this, but you get worn down over time so you just eat it. And your friends eat them too, a few times a month. And they don’t like them either but they treat it like it’s normal. Your parents had ham and chocolate sandwiches for lunch as kids too. So no one tells you it’s weird. And you meet someone as an adult who says what the FUCK you ate ham and chocolate???? That’s gross! How? And you respond – it was normal – you get used to it. And they ask you to name all the times you did but you can’t because it was so normalized and frequent. And they’re horrified and you’re confused.
And that is what happens when abuse is an everyday behavior that no one treats as abnormal, and why as an adult you continue to endure it.
After all, it’s not that bad. No one died. People go through worse. That’s what your parents said when they gave you the sandwiches. And it is engrained. To endure trauma. Why would you resist it if it feels like home?
Laughs and Lobotomies 