Unpacking the Trauma Trigger and the Path to Alchemical Healing

If this feels familiar, you are not broken

When someone hates, ridicules, neglects, rejects, demotivates, devalues, disrespects, disconnects, withdraws, becomes difficult, or punishes you for no visible reason, the pain is not only interpersonal. Something deeper happens inside.

You don’t just feel hurt — you feel betrayed by reality itself. The ground beneath you collapses. The relationship, institution, family, workplace, or community that once felt safe becomes unpredictable.

And then, almost automatically, something even more painful begins: You start treating yourself worse than you are being treated.

This article is about that moment — not to blame it or pathologize it, but to name it, normalize it, and liberate you from it through a trauma‑informed and liberatory lens.

The Personality Trigger: When Safety Is Withdrawn Without Explanation

Trauma‑informed psychology shows that one of the most destabilizing experiences for the human nervous system is the unexplained withdrawal of safety and connection (Herman, 1992; Porges, 2011).

No warning. No conversation. No accountability. Just:

• Coldness where there was warmth
• Silence where there was connection
• Punishment where there was care
• Distance where there was belonging

The nervous system does not register this as a “relationship issue.” It registers it as danger, abandonment, and threat to survival, activating defensive states automatically (Porges, 2011).

For those with histories of chronic rejection, emotional neglect, humiliation, caste‑, class‑, gender‑, or power‑based violence, this trigger cuts even deeper, because the body already knows this terrain (van der Kolk, 2014).

Betrayal Trauma: Why This Hurts So Much

Betrayal trauma theory explains why harm by a depended‑upon person or system is uniquely devastating (Freyd, 1996).

When the source of safety becomes the source of harm, the psyche faces an impossible dilemma: Seeing the betrayal clearly may threaten attachment, belonging, livelihood, or survival itself.

To resolve this, the mind often turns the blame inward. Instead of asking:

• Why are they treating me this way?

You begin asking:

• “What is wrong with me?”
• What did I do to deserve this?
• How can I change myself to restore the connection?

This inward turn is not pathology. It is adaptive intelligence under conditions of power imbalance (Freyd, 1996; Martín‑Baró, 1994).

The Automatic Trauma Response: Turning Against the Self

Many people recognize this pattern immediately:

• You stop standing up for yourself
• You minimize your pain
• You rationalize the other’s behavior
• You abandon your needs
• You silence anger and grief
• You doubt your own perception

Gradually, almost imperceptibly: You begin punishing yourself on their behalf.

From a neurobiological perspective, this is not a conscious choice. It is an automatic survival response shaped by earlier experiences where compliance, self‑erasure, or endurance reduced harm (van der Kolk, 2014).

The body remembers what once kept it alive.

The Collapse of Self‑Support

One of the most devastating consequences of betrayal trauma is the breakdown of self‑alliance.

You no longer stand by yourself. You second‑guess your instincts. You disconnect from your own internal signals.

Relational trauma research shows that when external attachment is threatened, individuals often sacrifice self‑trust to preserve connection, even when the connection is harmful (Herman, 1992).

This is not a weakness. It is the cost of surviving in environments where dignity was conditional.

Waiting to Be Rescued: The Freeze Response

When self‑support collapses, another survival strategy often emerges: Waiting for rescue.

• “Someday someone will understand me.”
• “Someday someone will take me out of this situation.”

This waiting reflects a freeze response — a state that arises when fight feels dangerous, and flight feels impossible (Porges, 2011).

Here lies a painful truth, offered with compassion- No one can truly support you when you cannot stand by yourself. Not because you are undeserving — but because self‑abandonment blocks support from being received.

Problematizing the Condition (Without Blame)

This condition is often mislabeled as:

• Low self‑esteem
• People‑pleasing
• Codependency
• Weak boundaries

These labels individualize what fundamentally relational and structural trauma. Liberation psychology insists we ask not only what is happening inside the person, but what social, political, and historical forces shaped this survival strategy (Martín‑Baró, 1994).

In caste‑stratified, patriarchal, or authoritarian systems, self‑erasure is often rewarded — and self‑assertion punished.

The wound, therefore, is not personal failure. It is internalized oppression.

A Liberating Frame: What Happened to You?

Liberating psychology reframes healing with a radical question, “What happened to you — and who benefited from your silence?” (Martín‑Baró, 1994).

Your self‑betrayal did not arise in isolation. It emerged in contexts where:

• Speaking truth led to punishment
• Needs were dismissed or mocked
• Love was withdrawn as control

Healing cannot be reduced to positive thinking or confidence training. It must be embodied, political, relational, and ethical.

The Alchemical Turn: From Self‑Abandonment to Self‑Alliance

Alchemy Healing rests on a central truth: Nothing in you is broken — parts of you are frozen in survival time.

The part that turns against you once believed this was the safest option. Healing, therefore, is not about forcing self‑love. It is about gently restoring self‑trust at the level of the nervous system, where safety is actually decided (Porges, 2011).

The Ease Revolution: Healing Without Violence to the Self

Many healing systems unintentionally repeat harm by pushing insight before safety or responsibility before repair. Ease‑based healing centers:

• Nervous‑system regulation before analysis
• Agency before boundary‑setting
• Embodiment before narrative change

The Ease Revolution integrates trauma neurobiology, somatic attunement, and liberatory psychology to dismantle internalized oppression without reproducing it.

What Healing Looks Like in Practice

Healing does not mean you will never feel hurt again. It means:

• You pause instead of self‑punishing
• You recognize betrayal without self‑blame
• You choose self‑alliance over self‑erasure

You begin asking, “What do I need right now to stay with myself?” That question marks the return of agency.

If You Recognised Yourself Here

Let this be said clearly:

• You are not weak
• You are not defective
• You are not imagining the harm
• You are not alone

You have been surviving something real. And survival is not the end of the story.

An Invitation

Alchemy Healing Hub and the Ease Revolution offer trauma‑informed, liberatory spaces for those ready to move from self‑abandonment toward self‑alliance — slowly, safely, and with dignity.

Not to fix you. But to support your return to yourself.

References

• Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. [cite_start]Harvard University Press. [cite: 98]
• Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. [cite_start]Basic Books. [cite: 99]
• Martín‑Baró, I. (1994). Writings for a liberation psychology. [cite_start]Harvard University Press. [cite: 100]
• Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self‑regulation. [cite_start]W. W. Norton & Company. [cite: 101]
• van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. [cite_start]Viking. [cite: 103]