Questions for Gauging Safe Relationships
+ signs of verbal abuse
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When someone has experienced trauma, it can be incredibly hard to feel safe when in relationships with others.
Maybe following the trauma you find yourself on edge in some way in many relationships.
And sometimes there may be a reason for that.
And other times there really isn’t and it’s just the trauma response talking.
However, a big part of healing is gradually learning to distinguish for yourself who is safe (because they are not similar to someone from your past) vs who is not safe (because they are, in fact, similar to someone from you past).
These questions might not be fool-proof, as I do believe that with things like this working individually with a therapist is what will be most effective. However, hopefully these questions will help you start gaining insight about what your automatic responses are and to start thinking about why those specific responses come up in these specific interactions and relationships.