You know what didn’t get enough attention in our last episode?
The brilliant model connecting childhood maltreatment and adult revictimization.
Because the insight and application of the model go so far beyond the scope of the paper and touch everything that has been affected, tainted, manipulated, and corrupted by CPTSD.
Which as we all know by now if we’ve been listening for a while… is everything! Every relationship, work experience, habit, behavior can be a long, indirectly influenced, artifact of childhood trauma.
So we have a lot we can work on. and it’s made possible by models like the one developed in the paper:
Childhood maltreatment and adulthood victimization: An evidence-based model
Fatemeh Fereidooni et al
Journal of Psychiatric Research
2023
Let’s revisit their concept, in layman’s terms.
From all the factors they investigated in the attempt to understand how childhood maltreatment tumbles into adult revictimization, they found that the mediating influences fell into three categories:
Negative schema or representations. These are things like fucked up core beliefs and limiting self-beliefs. Assumptions of self-worthlessness, fear of self, self-loathing. Existential understandings like “life is meaningless, the world is a chaotic and dangerous place, existence is pain and then you die.” To sortof summarize it all - a sensation of being lesser-than and cursed. And also doubt or fear of autonomy. A sense of helplessness or danger, alone. These are things we believe – we feel we KNOW – so deeply that they’re often implicit; lacking explicit words in our thoughts, but felt, and influencing everything else we think without our knowledge. They can also be explicit – thoughts we directly repeat to ourselves and others. But we rarely know the full breadth and depth of how these things affect everything else we think and do.
Then there’s the category of emotions and emotional dysregulation. As childhood maltreatment survivors and sufferers, we tend to have big emotions and lack the skills to temper them. To apply moderation. To shift our attention and energy in a different direction. To relieve ourselves after gathering the meaning of the emotion and put it to use. Rather, we generally fluctuate between no feelings and all the feelings – which can be in both positive and negative directions. Part of the reason? Fascinatingly, the negative schema we were just speaking about. Sure, those are always leaving a skidmark on positive thinking; they cause a certain negative vibration lasts for a lifetime has a way of bringing everything else down, at a baselevel. But when new negative emotions come in, when we reach into ourselves for comfort, what we find instead is negative core beliefs that make the emotional reaction worse instead of better. Then we hit the third and final category of abuse-exposure mediating factors:
Coping behaviors to numb the increasing pain-negative thought-spiral. Which are often risky, or at least maladaptive. ‘Maladaptive’ meaning, it works for a while, but the long-term outcome means the short-term coping strategy is not one that benefits you. i.e. drinking, one of the coping behaviors linked to childhood mistreatment and adult revictimization. You’ll feel better for a matter of moments or hours, everything else about it will negatively impact your life; your finances, health, daily functioning, cognitive skills, relationships, mood the next day after ingesting an abundance of a depressant, etc. Because there’s no way to make the emotion stop or improve when we have a chest full of negative, self and world-damning, beliefs, we try to escape from it – we try to change how we feel with external means. We, generally, disassociate in some way. Be that through substance use, eating, scrolling, zoning out, sleeping, fighting, working out fanatically, self-deprivation people pleasing, superstitions. Any loss-of-self-fostering behavior.
So taking it together… we hit a big emotion. We reach into our pocket for some self-comfort but instead find far worse thoughts and feelings that speak to our worst long-term life experiences. As a result, we start to spin out. To try to slow or stop the plunge, we do whatever we can through outward action since there’s nothing to grasp for inside. And this is how we build terrible habits, addictions, and long-term life outcomes. As well as wind up in revictimization experiences, as the original point of this model suggests.
See it.
Negative schemas at the bottom.
Dysregulated emotions on top.
Unhealthy coping behaviors on top of that.
And. Long term outcomes, like abusive relationships, addictions, and revictimization, as the little hat above it all.
Got it?
Now we have what we need to understand so much about ourselves without six months spent in therapy to get there.
What are the implications of this model?
And let’s work with it.
Firstly, I suggest listening to the NonViolent Communication Series alongside this episode. They are supportive concepts. In nonviolent communication it’s historic dysregulated emotions that elicit current dysregulated emotions that drive unwanted reactions. In this current model it’s historic beliefs. Both result in relationship and self-destruction. Give it a ponder.
Now, point number one for today:
This model means we can’t reparent ourselves.
Reparenting: giving yourself what you always needed as a child to develop cognitive and emotional health, now. Providing the comfort and guidance that would meet your human needs and create a well-balanced, self-supporting, mind. A thing that comes naturally to some, but doesn’t seem to “click” for a good portion of the abusive childhood crowd.
Because if you hit a negative emotion and internally attempt to self-comfort as the parent you never had, you’ll find what? Your negative core beliefs waiting for you. Not comfort. The same negative interpretations and expectations of life as always.
And those core beliefs were derived from whom?
Your parents.
So in your attempts to reparent yourself, you’ll actually only parent yourself the same way as before. And I doubt I’m the only one who’s muttering “the last thing I fucking need.”
Until you’ve addressed your core beliefs, you’re doomed to keep abusing, neglecting, punishing, and diminishing yourself when you attempt to make yourself feel better.
And that will create negative emotions that might inspire you to use the worst of your coping behaviors to make them more tolerable. Drinking, smoking, drugging, searching for romance or affection, eating comforting things, refusing to eat anything, sleeping, staring at screens, any number of obsessive or stereotypic behaviors. The list goes on.
There’s no money in the bank when times are hard.
Because there’s no “backup thoughts” to comfort yourself when things get shitty, you have no “money in the bank to make withdrawals” or “credit lines to call on” when you don’t have positive emotions to spend.
There’s no hoard of positivity or even-keeled, calming, self-talk or optimistic expectation to pull from when you’re feeling down. There’s only chronic, lingering negativity as a standard state, so that any small dose of acute modern negativity is immediately amplified inside the system rather than being neutralized or transformed.
It’s like running out of cash, trying to make a withdrawal from chase, and ending up with a fee on top of the original debt. There’s nothing here to be found! And, an extra bonus punishment for trying.
So when you have a shit day and someone says, “think of a brighter time” or “don’t worry, you know it can’t last like this forever,” you might reply “I can’t” and “it seems like it can though.” Which makes the negative event even more upsetting, instead of moving the needle in the positive direction.
This model explains why you can’t toxic positivity your way out of negative emotion.
Even if you TRY to be positive, you won’t be able to succeed, because negative schema about the self and the world are still driving the opposite.
You might be able to successfully force yourself to say positive things and ignore negative emotions for a time. But if the foundation of your experience is still damning views of yourself and everything around you and the ways of the universe at an implicit, “it’s always been there” level, you won’t stay positive for long.
You’ll always be playing pretend and relying on willful ignorance to appear happy go lucky.
Which is exhausting. And likely to drain your emotional and mental energy. So you’re more likely to slip into negative territory in both areas. So you’ll return to your normal way of thinking, speaking, and behaving quite quickly.
This also helps to explain:
Why behavioral change from the top-down doesn’t work
We can’t simply make the decision to change. Or else all of us would be different people in some or other ways.
When we attempt to regulate or alter ourselves from the top down – from the mind, your thoughts, your planning center, down into the meat of your body… it doesn’t work.
You might CHOOSE (from the logical, problem-solving, clear part of your mind) to start going to the gym every day, to quit smoking, to stop talking to so-and-so… but two weeks or two months or two years later… are you?
Probably not.
Which speaks to nothing about you or your willpower.
It speaks to the underlying, instructive, core beliefs that are below your conscious decisions.
You might make some high-falootin goal or intention. But that means nothing if at a lower, more instinctual because it has existed in you for so long, level… you have contradicting beliefs about yourself, your capacity, and the world.
That information will always win. Because it’s been there so long, it doesn’t even feel questionable; it’s simply a fact to your mind and body. Also, you possibly aren’t aware that it exists. It’s a principle of existence like gravity.
Go look over the edge of a cliff. Do you want to jump? No, because a part of you implicitly knows that gravity exists. You don’t even think about it.
Think about quitting your worst habit. Are you going to be able to do it right now, no other changes having been made? No, because a part of you implicitly knows that (insert limitation here – you can’t, you’ve tried before, everyone does it, it’s all you deserve) exists. You don’t even think about it.
Our behaviors being traced back through emotions to our fucked up core beliefs (negative self schema) explains why we do things that are illogical, stupid, and self-harming. Because emotions and core beliefs aren’t logical nor are they ruled by the confines of time.
And for that reason, this model is also great for understanding:
Self-sabotage/self-fulfilling prophecy
If you believe that you’re worthless, unlovable, doomed to be alone, trapped in a life of suffering… somewhat inherently, because the thoughts have always been there and are probably to some degree generational…
You’re going to re-create experiences that suggest the same thing.
NOT because you subconsciously or spiritually need to relive those horrible events again and again until you learn the lesson. You aren’t trying to teach yourself something by reliving the past.
But you are using the same thoughts and feelings as you’ve always had. So you’re going to behave similarly. So the same outcomes are going to be obtained.
“I’m going to create a whole new life for myself after I move!”
Probably not, because a big emotion is going to cause you to re-ping your worst assessments and expectations about life, which will cause your emotions to get bigger, which, without better coping skills, will cause the same destructive or risky coping behaviors as always because there’s not another tool to pull from the belt.
And from those actions, the same life will begin to take shape as the last iteration. Making it one long continuation of disappointment and pain. Doubling back and re-confirming those fucked up core beliefs so they appear real.
There’s no “purity of intention or emotion” when fucked up core beliefs are still informing your every action. There’s only the taint of the past, touching everything in the present and future. Which then validates the past, locking you in an even firmer set of core beliefs that serve you no good.
The present and future continue looking, feeling, and sounding a lot like the past. And we can’t imagine or behave a way out of it.
When we believe we’re useless garbage people at a deep, potentially wordless, level, we’re going to wind up in situations that reflect the same. Even if we’ve pointedly decided not to be a useless garbage person.
This model suggests that we will make our own prisons.
Which look exactly like the prisons that were created for us in childhood.
Because we haven’t learned to pick up a spoon and tunnel our way out. We’ve only learned to continuously accept the prison, to make our cell smaller and smaller…. Or to rebuild a new one if we DO manage to escape, unequipped for the rest of the journey.
Considering how important this flow of factors seems to be in every area of life and the overall degree of suffering an individual will endure… how can we work WITH the model to psychotherapize ourselves, to allow emotional health and behavioral change?
This model can break down and explain any habit or negative outcome you “caused” and trace it back to implicit fucked up core beliefs that might be impossible to look at directly.
Now that we’ve mapped this all out, we can move backwards from negative coping behavior (smoking, going to bars) OR unwanted longterm outcome (health problems, attracting predatory relationships) to emotional disturbance (frustration, loneliness) to negative schema about yourself and / or the world.
So we’re going to use the acronym OBEY. And yes, I had to mess with things a little to make that happen.
O – outcome
B – behavior as in coping behavior
E – emotion; the big disturbance that felt overwhelming
Y – your negative schemas
And we can write this vertically on a piece of paper. O at the top, BEY to follow in a column.
Pick a life outcome that you’ve not been thrilled with. For instance: diminished health.
O – diminished health. I’m thinking of my inflammation which affects everything else.
B – behaviors in my life that promote inflammation that I’m aware of, but still doing; eating foods that my body doesn’t love and smoking cigarettes
E – emotional disruption that immediately proceeds or happens concurrent with those unhealthy coping behaviors? For eating – loneliness. For smoking – frustration. And keep in mind, I’ve pinpointed these motivators from observing myself. If you can track exactly what you’re feeling the moment you have a craving or start behaving unconsciously, you have found the emotional driver of the behavior.
Y – your negative beliefs. For smoking: “nothing is ever better, it doesn’t matter what I do.” For eating: “who cares? No one.” Thoughts that I’ve also found by observing myself when I have one of those negative emotions (frustration or loneliness), deep inside.
Looking for SUBC clues
So when you’re having a big, negative, historical-feeling emotion? Check for washed out images behind the eyeballs, ghostly voices or phrases, flashbacks, and dreams for clues about your own hidden core beliefs. And, of course, check for patterns that are suggested by the unwanted emotions, behaviors, and outcomes.
Example: If you’re living in subpar conditions time and again? Maybe you have a belief about what sort of dwelling you deserve, or being uncomfortable at home has never been questioned as “optional.” Figure out where you may have learned that in childhood or earlier.
Break down the inner information you can collect. Contextualize it with external patterns. Ground it in history with early life experiences that may have gifted you these negative thoughts, repeated so many times that they became a “knowing.”
Then reparent the belief.
Reparenting
If we’ve pinpointed the fucked up core belief, we can challenge it the way a parent always should have. You can begin to rewrite it, so it stops manipulating your life.
Ask questions like:
Logically, is it true that an individual will be chosen from the population to be tortured everywhere they sleep? No.
Do you “deserve” to be tormented? No.
Would you say either of these things to a friend or a child? No. that’s insane.
Right.
And it’s insane to believe it about yourself, too.
So offer the opposite. The broader, more reasonable, adult perspective that’s been missing.
Everyone has the right to a safe home. There’s no curse. You don’t deserve to be uncomfortable. You aren’t less worthy than anyone else. You ARE letting this brain worm determine your life experience for you.
More examples: back to smoking and eating incorrectly.
Let’s reparent.
Is it true that “nothing ever gets better and it doesn’t matter what I do?” No. But there are days it feels like that. There’s one surefire way to ensure things DON’T improve… to believe they can’t and do nothing differently. There’s one way to ensure things DO change… to keep taking action.
Is it true that “no one cares about me” as a standard? No. Sometimes I feel too alone, but other times I have had people. There are explosions and lulls. That means a high tide is coming soon.
Then, I just need to have these discussions with myself every time I attempt to light up or binge some healthy snacks that become unhealthy when you’ve eaten three tons of them, and also when I’m NOT itching to self-sabotage in those ways. Because the fucked up core belief isn’t going to go away on trial 1. It’s going to take a lot of gentle, logical, reparenting.
More examples of the OBEY model:
Outcome: abusive relationship
Behaviors used for emotional coping that drove the outcome: clinging, human escapism, and seeking a new mom
Emotions that caused the behaviors: anxiety and confusion intertwined with a lack of purposeful direction or understanding of life
Your (my) negative belief that doesn’t help to regulate – really only worsens – those emotions: I’m meaningless and worthless
From that belief, seek subconscious memories of where it may have originated from. Look for patterns. Look for specific events that have stuck with you. Put them into the context of your larger life, including who it was who gave you the FUCB in the first place and how THEY were doing. What was THEIR life outcome? Why would they say this to you, innocently or with malice?
Reparenting?
No one is meaningless or worthless. If you’re feeling that way, it’s probably because only you’re focusing on the wrong things, because you’ve had to. Pouring energy into a bucket that’s never had a bottom, because it was required. Living up to expectations and survival necessities, not your own needs and ambitions. You have meaning to the environment and animals around you, for starters. Beings who really get to know you, spend time with you intimately, and love you. Maybe their brand of love isn’t perfect, but you matter to them. You’ll matter to many more. You can affect change. You can do things that improve life for others. None of that implies you’re meaningless or worthless. Just unfulfilled and in the wrong community to make the greatest impact.
Another:
O – stagnation, catatonia, increased PTSD symptoms
B – disassociation through scrolling, tv, smoking weed
E – hopelessness
Y – I am helpless
A hopeless feeling would elicit the FUCB “I can’t do anything about this, I am thwarted, I am trapped.” The helplessness belief would worsen the hopelessness feeling. The way to find relief would be disassociating in any way possible. The long-term outcome would be stalling out, shutting down, and suffering more in anxiety, depression, hypervigilance, shame.
The answer? Address the helplessness belief.
Seek subconscious memories. Put them into the context of your larger life, including who it was who gave you the FUCB in the first place and how THEY were doing. What was THEIR life outcome? Why would they say this to you, innocently or with malice?
Then do the reparenting.
You aren’t helpless. It may feel like it sometimes because the world is so big and so are the assholes you’ll encounter. But there’s always something you can do. Even if that thing is to support yourself. You can control your own behaviors. You can stay steady over time, even if you can’t break free immediately. And long-term you’ll see the fruits. Don’t fall into black and white thinking or expectation of immediate results. Just respond in the way you can, and realize that as long as you’re meeting the challenge to the best of your ability each day, depending on what your ability IS that day… you’re not helpless or hopeless.
Overall OBEY process & WRAP
And that’s how to use the CM to AR model to discover what drives maladaptive behaviors, to get emotionally conscious, to notice and name your FUCBs, and to reparent yourself so they can dissipate. So your behaviors are beneficial and intentional. So you don’t relive the patterns of the people who came before you or the relationships you’ve already survived.
O – outcome
B – coping behavior that causes the outcome
E – emotion that causes the coping behavior
Y – your negative belief that doesn’t allow you to comfort yourself emotionally, and actually makes everything worse
Work backwards to the fucked up core belief (negative self and world schema)
Then investigate for clues about the origins and use them to recontextualize and disprove the validity of the belief.
And finally reparent yourself by offering emotional and cognitive support while addressing the core belief logically. Is this a true statement? Or did you only comprehend a portion of it as a child, and you’ve been granting a bad interpretation too much power ever since?
Don’t let maladaptive beliefs create a maladapted life.
Pause, back your way up the behavior to emotion to cognition pathway, ask questions about what you find at the bottom; your beliefs, and reframe what you’ve seen, to be there for yourself now and in the future, the way you’ve always needed mature adult to do it.
Thanks for taking this deeper dive into the model with me.
I hope it helps break down your greatest self-sabotaging mysteries.
And I’ll talk to you soon.