How my mother’s manipulation shaped my relationships and how therapy is helping me unlearn survival as love.
I just got out of therapy, and my chest still feels heavy — that deep kind of ache that sits somewhere between grief and clarity.
Today’s session was about my mother. About the way she raised me to survive her, and how I’ve unknowingly spent my adult life recreating that same dynamic in the people I’ve chosen to love.
At one point, my therapist looked at me and asked, “Do you trust anyone?”
My answer came out before I could even think: “I used to…before the last year.”
And it’s true. I used to trust easily. I was that person who saw the good in everyone. Even when they showed me their worst. I believed that most people wanted to be good, that if I just loved hard enough, they’d rise to meet that love. I used to think softness was strength.
But after what I just went through, that trust feels cracked open. That hope feels bruised.
My therapist told me something that’s still sitting with me: “Your mother groomed you for compliance.”
That sentence hit me in the gut.
