How It Started

Police were the people who handcuffed your parent and took them away from you—not the protectors other kids might have seen them as 👮🏻‍♂️. You learned early that calling the cops meant your family might get destroyed, not helped. Courtrooms and government offices became hostile territory where your family might get torn apart and abused, not places where justice happened. Your survival instincts became incredibly sharp because you had to learn who you could safely tell your truth to—people who looked like you and your family and understood your world. This created a cruel equation in your nervous system: People who understood your world couldn't protect you, and people who could protect you didn't understand your world. Your brain learned to seek safety in shared secrets rather than actual security. You learned to trust others from similar troubled backgrounds—people who wouldn't judge your family or call the authorities, but who often couldn't keep you truly safe either. You became skilled at finding people you could trust with your secrets, but this came at a cost—the people safe to confide in were often unsafe to depend on for real protection. 🔐

How It Looks Now

Now you find yourself drawn to partners you can be honest with about your past, but who may bring their own chaos and danger into your life 🌋. You're comfortable sharing your truth with people from similar backgrounds, but struggle when those same people can't provide the stability and safety you need. You have trouble knowing when someone who understands your story is actually good for your wellbeing. When relationship conflicts arise, you feel torn between staying with people who "get" you and seeking safety with people who might judge your history. You've developed remarkable skills for building authentic connections with complex people, but often at the expense of your own security.

The Core Pattern

At your core, you're trapped in a loyalty test no one can pass. High-risk partners prove their love by keeping secrets, but they bring familiar dangers. On the other hand, safe partners might accept your past, but they trigger deep betrayal fears and lack of chemistry. Your nervous system rewards you for choosing the devil you know. What makes this choice easier for you is your incredible ability to create deep bonds with people who experienced hardships and loving others through their worst moments 💪. You can see beyond someone's surface behaviors to their underlying pain and potential. But this wisdom came at a devastating cost: you learned that being able to trust someone and being emotionally safe never come from the same person. The cruel irony is that your gift for connecting with authentic, yet troubled people often leaves you surrounded by those who can't provide the protection and stability you seek. As much as you try to meet your need for acceptance at the expense of your need for safety, that can never succeed.