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I remember for my younger birthdays, my mom would continuously make it about herself, pull knives on me or my brothers, yell at us, berate us. one day she made us verbally explain why we were complete wastes of human space, and how we could become better sons. she always tried to divide my brothers so we could always use her to talk to others, like an intermediarry. any time we would hang out without her permission, she would get mad at us for weeks at a time, send us to a black box essentially. it was like this black box with no light or windows, and we just had to sit there and reflect. it eventually led to me and my brothers learning to love isolation, which is another problem in itself

my gf's family on the other hand doesn't really operate under this principle and it really confuses me. they like being nice to me, giving me gifts, and cards, and hanging out with me. the thing is my brain is very confused by this behavior, because it can't make out why someone would want to be that nice to me. they actually like talking to each other and hanging out, and it makes no sense to me. they ask me questions. a few times it short circuited my brain too much, because my brain simply can't accept benevolence from others, it tries, but it always ends up breaking down due to a complete lack of understanding

I remember for my younger birthdays, my mom would continuously make it about herself, pull knives on me or my brothers, yell at us, berate us. one day she made us verbally explain why we were complete wastes of human space, and how we could become better sons. she always tried to divide my brothers so we could always use her to talk to others, like an intermediarry. any time we would hang out without her permission, she would get mad at us for weeks at a time, send us to a black box essentially. it was like this black box with no light or windows, and we just had to sit there and reflect. it eventually led to me and my brothers learning to love isolation, which is another problem in itself my gf's family on the other hand doesn't really operate under this principle and it really confuses me. they like being nice to me, giving me gifts, and cards, and hanging out with me. the thing is my brain is very confused by this behavior, because it can't make out why someone would want to be that nice to me. they actually like talking to each other and hanging out, and it makes no sense to me. they ask me questions. a few times it short circuited my brain too much, because my brain simply can't accept benevolence from others, it tries, but it always ends up breaking down due to a complete lack of understanding

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[–] • 0 pt

It seems like you already intuitively know the answer here and that your past was unhealthy and you are witnessing a healthy dynamic for possibly the first time.

The trick is your mind can know all these things. You can know consciously what is right or wrong, your mind can perceive that you were raised in an unhealthy manner and can even recognize what healthy traits would look like. However, how do you re-program your subconscious (beneath your conscious mind)? You cannot think your way out of learned behaviour, childhood trauma, and programmed responses. So is there a way to reprogram your subconscious and heal? What do you think?