It turned out that as a child she’d lived with abusive caregivers, and that trauma had shaped her view of the world, her relationships, and her need for intense emotional experiences. She associated the trauma with a negative belief about herself; this is very common and it becomes part of why the experience gets stuck and replayed. And she craved the intensity of abuse – it was like a drug that she’d been programmed to need, even as it destroyed her, bit by bit. Uncertainty made her feel alive. So it was no wonder she kept going back to this man; paradoxically, he was the route to her
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