Learning to survive
Through long-lasting traumatic experiences in my childhood, which stretched across many years of my childhood and youth, I developed various survival strategies.
The way I remember these experiences today changed as I grew older. Their nature, intensity, and extent, and also the people connected with them in my memories, were different. With every phase of life, what I experienced as manipulation and abuse changed too. And with each of these phases, I learned to survive in a new way.
I learned to love what I knew.
Of course I had a home. There were good times and precious memories. My physical needs were taken care of, I was allowed to go to school and later do vocational training, we went on vacation together, and I had a close relationship with my sister. There were many moments when we laughed, when we spent time together, and when family life could be light, too.
One of the hardest realizations for me was that a person I associate with such acts could, at the same time, lead a perfectly ordinary life outside of these experiences. People can have friends, family, hobbies, joys, worries, and successes – and still, for a child, be connected with experiences that deeply shape that child’s life.
For me, this other side changes nothing about what I experienced.
What I experienced took something from me that every child has a right to: the chance of healthy development, individuality and self-realization, a healthy sense of self-worth – and the chance to come to know love as something safe and healthy.
For me, the consequences didn’t end with the experiences themselves. Afterward I experienced silence, denial, blame being turned back on me, and the feeling that what had happened must not be spoken. Out of that grew a psychological burden that stayed with me for decades.
Years full of suffering
I was ill for many years of my life. I suffered from severe depression, psychosomatic complaints, and symptoms I could never explain. I would never have thought that their cause lay in my childhood.
I studied psychology, trauma, and all kinds of forms of abuse intensively. I read, learned, and tried to understand. And still, because of dissociation, repression, and other protective mechanisms of my nervous system, I never saw myself as a victim, not even remotely.
Just allowing this thought at all cost me years.
Years full of suffering.
And even today, healing costs me time, strength, energy, courage, and pushing past my own reluctance. Looking isn’t easy.
No hatred, no desire for revenge
Despite everything, I feel no hatred and no desire for revenge. All I wish for is peace. I never want to be confronted with the world of my trauma again.
For the people themselves, I hardly feel anything anymore. What remains is deep incomprehension, horror, and endless compassion for the little girl who felt so helpless, so unknowing, and so at their mercy. A girl whose trust was betrayed and whose dignity was violated.
That is what still hurts me most to this day.
Not only because of the past, but because of the many consequences I still connect with it decades later. There are moments when triggers come up and my nervous system reacts before my mind can make sense of it. Then I sometimes feel helpless or fall back into old patterns, even though I have long known why they arise.
Patterns that repeat
None of my relationships lasted. I never learned what a healthy partnership looks like. Instead, I kept ending up in dynamics that felt frighteningly familiar to me – relationships with people who had their own wounds, or behaviors I experienced as controlling, manipulative, or toxic. Control, manipulation, and power were themes I came up against again and again in my life.
I often looked for love and recognition where I had to give up myself to get them. I fought for friendships and relationships, adapted, put myself second, and hoped to finally be enough.
Elsewhere, in turn, I showed entirely different protective mechanisms. Fear of losing control, dominance, or trying to keep situations under control. None of that was really me. They were patterns of my nervous system trying to create safety.
For many years I went through life as if someone else were steering me.
The people around me, in turn, reacted to these patterns. And whatever drew us to each other was rarely healthy.
What has changed
Today I recognize many things much sooner.
I notice patterns faster. I’m better at setting boundaries. I stay with myself more often. I recognize behavior that feels manipulative to me earlier, and I sense more and more clearly what belongs to me – and what doesn’t.
I’m in a healing process that can no longer be stopped. That’s good. Even so, I’m not yet completely free of what I experienced.
Because even until a few years ago, there were relationships that I experienced as marked by control, power, and manipulation.
Experiences like that can leave traces, too.
More and more often, though, I reach a point where resistance no longer throws me off course. Not because I’ve become hard, but because I trust more and more in what feels right for me and my children.
Guilt still fights against my wish for self-determination and freedom. Some reactions from others set off these old feelings of guilt in me – blame, for example, or sarcasm, or remarks I perceive as subtle put-downs.
The difference from before is this: I see it. I feel it. I recognize that it isn’t mine.
What I’m allowed to do
Along my way, I have lost people. I’m sure I’ve hurt people, too. Healing doesn’t make us perfect. But it makes us more honest – above all with ourselves.
Other people carry the responsibility for their own actions.
But I’m allowed to let what doesn’t belong to me leave my life, my head, and, bit by bit, my body too – without feeling guilty.
I can’t undo what I experienced.
But I don’t have to forgive in order to become free.
I’m allowed to let go.
I’m allowed to set boundaries.
I’m allowed to protect myself.
And every day, I’m allowed to become a little more the woman who was always there beneath all the survival strategies.
For my daughters
And I face all of it.
Not because I have to be strong. But because I want to show my daughters that healing is possible. That you can face your past without letting it define you forever.
I hope that one day they’ll be able to look at their own story and know: Our mother didn’t run away. She looked. She took responsibility – not for what was done to her, but for what she made of it.
I endure this path so that they can experience what I myself was never allowed to know: a mother who heals. A mother who understands herself better and better. A mother who shows them, by living it, that freedom, self-respect, and a healthy life are possible.
Maybe I can’t spare them every wound. But I can show them that it’s okay to have the courage to look at them.
That is the greatest gift I can give them.
And maybe that is exactly the moment when trauma is no longer passed down through the generations – but ends with love, awareness, and responsibility.