End to End Trifecta

 

This perfectly captures the cycle of trauma that keeps repeating itself due to insecure attachments, unpredictable environments during development, and failures in regulating the nervous system from an early age. You explain very well how these complex trauma adaptations revolve around avoiding the discomfort of internal emotional and physical dysregulation using any available means, but ultimately prevent healing the root causes.

The theory accurately describes how early emotional and relational instability becomes ingrained, causing a constant fluctuation between highly aroused and under-aroused states. This fluctuation provides a false sense of stability through predictable patterns, but it doesn't actually create true safety.

At the same time, the misery of living within this pendulum necessitates desperate attempts to escape through self-medication, excessive work, or codependency. However, these external coping mechanisms also prevent us from facing the suppressed emotional wounds that need resolution beneath the surface of our survival behaviors.

As a result, the distress rooted in our bodies during crucial developmental stages persists and continues to erupt as painful physical and emotional flashbacks. However, our tendency is to immediately retreat into dissociation and distracting defense mechanisms to avoid the destabilizing storms caused by these somatic experiences. This causes the past to remain deeply ingrained in our subconscious as an ongoing threat in the present.

You beautifully articulate how breaking free from the bonds of trauma requires stepping back INTO the trauma

Trauma in childhood often created habits in our body and brain to feel either:

1. Too ramped up (anxiety)
2. Shut down and numb (depression)

We bounce back and forth between the two which becomes familiar.

These states feel unpleasant so we escape them by:

1. Overworking
2. Self-medicating
3. People pleasing

But by always running away, we never learn to be with and release old pain trapped in our body from back then.

The old hurt stays stuck and keeps bursting out as panic attacks or upsets that seem to come “out of nowhere”. They’re scary so we want to run away again!

The key is to not judge ourselves but slowly face the hard feelings with care. This can heal the past still living in our body so we find peace.