(gentle inspirational music)
- In this video, we're gonna to talk about
what some of us consider the biggest challenge of all,
and that's our tendency to be attracted to the wrong people.
And I'm gonna talk to you about how to stop doing that.
Yes.
Childhood PTSD just seems to make those
out of reach people seem so irresistible.
I'm talking about married people,
or people where the relationship has to be secret,
cause that can be tantalizing secret relationships.
Either no one else knows or sometimes
the person we love doesn't even know.
And we never say anything because
that could really freak them out.
That's a childhood PTSD thing, by the way.
Staying in a fantasy world with
a very idealized love for someone.
And just saying, of all the ways not to get love,
fantasy romances do the job pretty well.
But some unavailable people, look like they're available.
I mean, they live with us
or maybe they're even married to us.
But they have some kind of a thing in the way,
like an addiction, or some activity
that always takes priority.
Or maybe they have a fantasy romance,
or they're just plain selfish.
That means they cannot or will not care
about us in any kind of real way.
I think the thing about childhood PTSD is that,
it can be very easy to get hooked
into that lukewarm kind of love,
or the kind that turns on and then off again randomly.
And then you're like, what just happened?
It's like when you're taking a shower
and someone flushes the toilet,
and suddenly it's like cold water.
That's what it's like when you show love to a person
with childhood PTSD and then just take it away.
Except for us, it can make us more into that relationship.
That kind of emotional toggling,
is called intermittent reinforcement, by the way.
And psychopaths are very, very good at it,
as a means of manipulation.
Not that your partner is necessarily a psychopath,
because, this is a lot what love is like.
If you're with, simply an addict for an alcoholic, right?
That intermittent love from an alcoholic partner or parent,
it plays a big role in generating insecure attachment.
"You're great."
"You're terrible."
"I'll do anything for you."
"I forgot all about you."
And it's our nature to get very, very hooked into this,
tryna to figure out how to make the love come back.
This is a technique that kidnappers use on hostages too,
and interrogators use it on prisoners of war.
It's a known motivator, but being romantically hooked by it,
that's a PTSD thing.
I suspect a normal person would kinda just say,
"What you're loving, then you're randomly
cold and disapproving?
This isn't working for me."
But we, we stay.
Then there's the people who are just not that into us.
And maybe we've discussed this with them.
And we told them how we felt a bit them,
but they said they didn't feel the same way, and we stay.
And then we take whatever crumbs we can.
Or we don't say anything,
and we have to keep our feelings secret,
because we're pretty sure the other person
would cut us off if they knew
how strongly we felt about them.
And we keep it secret from our friends,
that we feel that way,
because they want the best for us,
and they'd see that we're doing something destructive.
So on some level, we know this kind of behavior is sad,
but we have this huge capacity
to kinda have muddy vision on it.
And like, maybe there's hope.
Maybe it's better not to wonder if there's hope,
because not having those crumbs,
looks like it's going to be so unbearable.
So here's the thing, when we're doing that,
we're emotionally unavailable.
No healthy person is gonna come along
and save us from that state.
It's like, we're in a cage.
It's an invisible cage, that we hope no one can see,
that we're trying not to see.
While we play along with the idea that, eh, you know,
we're cool with this crap situation.
We like just being friends.
And we put pictures on Facebook and Instagram,
and we're all, ah,
having such a great time when,
the truth is, anything but.
Then there's the quasi secret relationships,
ones where there's definitely a relationship,
but it can't be public.
Either because the other person
doesn't want their friends to know about you,
or whether you admit it or not,
you don't want your friends to know about them.
Maybe because they're not an appropriate
choice for you, or they get drunk a lot
or they're the ex of a friend.
You know, when you hear about women
who marry guys who are serving life sentences,
that may seem like way out at the end of the spectrum.
But, it's the same spectrum, essentially.
When we're attached to unavailable people,
we're doing the same thing.
So let's think about that.
We're committing years of our life,
to an experience of hurt and disappointment.
And you'd almost think that we kind of enjoy that,
like it was a choice,
But I happen to know, there can be long periods in life
when it's not a choice, it's a rut.
It's not a choice until the desire to change is great enough
that we're willing to face the pain of what we're doing.
A lot of times, we think the other person
is holding the power,
as if they're doing this to us,
as if, all that's needed is for them to change.
But uh uh, it's us.
So here's the question.
Why do we do that?
What is it about early trauma that predisposes us,
to all this behavior?
(gentle inspirational music)