Read these lines in the book What Happened to You? about how child abuse can manifest itself:
If a child experiences abuse, their brain may make an association between the features of the abuser or the circumstances of the abuse—hair color, tone of voice, the music playing in the background—and a sense of fear. The complex and confusing associations can influence behaviors for years; later in life, for example, being served in a restaurant by a brown-haired man who hovers over you while he takes your order may elicit a panic attack. But because there is no firmly embedded cognitive recollection—no linear narrative memory—the panic is often experienced and interpreted as random, independent of any previous experience.
I was in a relationship with a man a very long time ago, who I suspected might have been a victim of childhood abuse. M was highly intelligent, creative and personable - traits that made him attractive to me and people who knew him socially or professionally. Yet, for me things were much more complicated. We could go from having a perfectly wonderful time on a weekend to dark, a vicious, inescapable place by Sunday night that would wait the entire week to pass. The triggers felt random at first but over time, some patterns emerged. They were things one could not avoid in daily life and yet I tried.
It became my job to shield M from those triggers, distract his attention away from them and hope for the best. He wanted to confide in me but could not trust me enough - he did not have confidence I was able to correctly identify his demons. Most importantly, M did not think I had the desire or patience to wage this war alongside for as long as it took to slay them. He was right on both counts. After a while, I gave up trying to stop "some poisonous fogbank, roll in" on his mind as it inevitably did - I just left him. He needed a woman who would make it her life's mission and purpose to rescue him. I hope for his sake he found her.
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