Of course, in a situation where even a therapist couldn’t help, it’s hard to try and offer help, and I don’t know if my comment will make any difference, but while I was reading your post, here’s what I thought…
Traumatized individuals often display a unique worldview, where they see themselves at the center and everything revolves around them. This is normal, as it’s a healthy position for a child, and when we experience trauma, we often get stuck in it, especially when it comes to emotional reactions and processing interactions with the world around us. Trauma activates in a child a need to “survive” especially strongly, and if this state isn’t resolved by a wise and supportive parent, the person continues to live in a subconscious survival mode during an “attack” (or another personal cataclysm), and this is characterized by a special attention to oneself and heightened sensitivity. For understandable reasons, we put ourselves first, and everything starts to divide into “me” and “not me.” And everything that falls into the “not me” category isn’t considered in detail because, well, you simply have to survive.
When everything is okay, and a person no longer needs to fight for survival, the shock retreats, and we realize that there are other people in the world, and those people have their own lives, their own processes, and their own souls. These people might also have experienced some trauma in life and have reasons for acting the way they did.
For example, I find it very helpful in processing my own trauma to understand my parents.
Why did my father behave that way? Why did he insist on dividing the utility bill for our co-op apartment, and for a year and a half, my mother, he, his wife, and I lived in my childhood home like it was a communal apartment, and I spoke to my father maybe ten times during that period? That was when he became a “neighbor” and ceased to be a father. Forever. And when my mother’s boyfriend in the next room was groping and kissing me, an eleven-year-old, I never even thought about the fact that my father could have protected me. I hated my father for this for a long time, even after his death, when he died and destroyed any chance of his own repentance.
But he suffered all his life. After the war, he might not have survived, as my grandmother, his mother, lived with two children in a room with a leaking roof. And her husband, my grandfather, brought back a cousin from Odessa, whom he married. My father, the youngest, was sent to his father’s new wife, where he was unwanted and unloved. His own father wasn’t shy about telling him to go away and not bother him. My father felt betrayed his entire life, and his mother was the one who betrayed him. So, when my mother divorced him, she also became a traitor. And his new wife — a clever bitch — was a sweetheart and an angel.
Of course, my father was a fantastic egoist and a bad father, but he fought his whole life with childhood trauma, and I can’t imagine what I would have become if I had been pushed away like that. At least my father understood that he abandoned me, and he suffered because of it, but as a morbid and globalizing person, he didn’t try to fix it, or he didn’t understand how it should be fixed, even if he tried.
I intentionally give such a detailed example so that you understand the depth of this issue.
Yes, in general, my life has been warped because of such a father (and not only that). And sometimes working through childhood trauma is a lifelong task. It’s an endless necessity to realize that the power is in your hands — to realize. Awareness gives you the ability to pull yourself out of old patterns and habitual reactions and see that you’re no longer a little child. You no longer need to survive. And the people around you aren’t just a big, incomprehensible “not me”; they have their own lives and feelings.
I don’t know who this “specific” person is for you, but he is not the cause of you becoming the defenseless child again in traumatic conditions, crying out to be saved from death. And your parents are often not to blame for this — no one taught them to be subtle psychologists, to understand all the ins and outs of the human soul, especially a child’s soul. They may have had their own traumas.
But we are adults. Yes, it’s hard sometimes, and that’s why you need a therapist who will bring you back to the ground and help you see the situation again through the eyes of an adult and not the child in trouble.
Your person has admitted that he did something wrong and is sincerely trying to explain why. I hear that he’s fighting for his right to his own feelings. Do you know why? Because it feels like you’re not hearing anything or anyone except for yourself. I, I, I. I don’t blame you at all, as I said above, it’s a completely normal position for a child, especially when they’re in trouble. But you’re not a child, actually, and you don’t need saving. It just seems that way. Because you’re seeing the world through the eyes of a traumatized person.
But you are not the child who received the trauma. You have long since moved away from that child. You’ve learned, you’ve understood much about life. Even your body has completely renewed itself since then; not a single old cell remains. You, by all measures, are a completely different person. But the trauma clung to you through your memory and makes you activate a “survival” mode over things that may not even require it.
In general, I can honestly say that without outside help, I very rarely manage to remember this and return to a state of awareness. That’s why a competent therapist is necessary. But it is also possible to do this on your own.
I hope I’ve at least slightly eased your situation and given you some hope.