Self-image: Can childhood trauma make someone believe that they deserve to be treated badly?

What someone may find, that is if they were to reflect on their life, is that they are rarely treated well by others. Just thinking about it could make them angry and they could feel depressed later.

To make matters worse, this is how their life could be for as long as they can remember, which means they may believe that this is what life is like. Consequently, they may believe that there is very little they can do about it.

totally helpless

It could be as if other people can treat them however they want and that there is very little they can do to protect themselves. As a result of this, there is a chance that they will have a lot of anger.

This may be something that has built up due to how strangers and people in their lives have treated them over the years. There may be times when they express how they feel, but for the most part, they might keep it to themselves.

a closer look

If they were to describe what happens, then they could say that people often cross their boundaries, belittle them, ignore them, and treat them as worthless. Just thinking about what’s going on could fill them with rage.

There may be times when you imagine what it would be like to take revenge and punish those who have wronged you. Then again, they may not have much of a fight in them and just feel sorry for themselves.

no choice

If they have a victim mentality, they may believe that the world is against them and wants them to suffer. Therefore, for your life to change, what is happening ‘out there’ will have to change.

Deep down, they might have a strong need for someone to save them. With the support of someone strong and capable, it will give them the strength and power to turn their lives around.

Two levels

Now, while experiencing life this way will make you have a miserable existence, it might just be what you feel comfortable with on a deeper level. On the surface, one will be against what is taking place, but on a deeper level, they may be strongly attached to what is taking place.

If they were to hear this, they might end up dismissing what has been said and saying that they desperately want their life to change. The fact that experiencing life in this way makes them angry and frustrated, for example, can be seen as evidence to support what they are saying.

diving in

However, the truth is that if being treated this way didn’t make them comfortable on a deeper level, they wouldn’t put up with it. In order to accept this, you will need to connect with what is occurring in your body.

If you only focus on what is happening in your mind, you will not be able to see what is really happening. When it comes to why they’re comfortable with what’s going on, it’s likely because of what happened during their early years.

back in time

Many years will have passed since then, and your mind will have blocked out what happened, so you won’t have been able to connect the dots, so to speak. If your mind didn’t have so many defenses in place, defenses that are in place to protect you, you might see the connection.

At this stage in their life, they may have been abused and/or neglected on a weekly, if not daily basis. This would have meant that they did not receive the love, attention and care they needed to be able to develop in the right way.

Two parts

In addition to this, there would have been the meaning that his underdeveloped mind made of what happened. Since this was a time when they were self-centered, it would have meant that what happened was taken personally.

It wasn’t then that their caretakers were wrong; it was that they were inherently bad and flawed. So now that they are adults, the meaning they made all those years ago will define how they see themselves.

inner child

Another way of looking at this would be to say that the child they were will now live inside them. This childish part will greatly influence how they feel and what kind of behavior they tolerate.

Until this part of them realizes that they don’t deserve to be treated badly, they’ll probably find that their adult selves don’t either. Once you do, they will have a felt sense of value and will no longer be a human punching bag just absorbing blows thrown at them.

Conscience

You will have been through a lot as a child and experienced things that no child should have to experience, yet now you can heal the parts of yourself that are wrong and gradually transform your life. For this to happen, they may need to seek outside support.

​

This is something that can be provided with the help of a therapist or healer.