Right, this is gonna be a tricky thread about trauma recovery, resilience, responsibility, & personal growth, especially from toxicity and/or abuse. So content warning on that I guess.

I know this is going to be controversial & I both apologize & am happy to talk about this.

I probably should've learned my lesson to not talk about things like this on twitter, but I'm choosing to do so because this has made such a big difference in my life. If this philosophy doesn't work for you or makes you feel bad, ignore it, trash it, & use what's useful instead.

For me, the biggest step of my trauma healing was internalizing that many of the people who treated me badly /abused me in my life did it unintentionally, & aren't inherently bad people. It's just that our dynamic was toxic, & I can take responsibility for my part of that & grow.

This is hard to talk about in a way that doesn't feel victim blame-y, but for me, this was so important.

I'd developed patterns that caused me to be attracted to people who were avoidant &/or narcissistic. I'd get triggered by them being themselves. It was a cycle I could break.

This doesn't mean I deserved it. It doesn't mean I earned it. It doesn't make it okay.

But it explains some things, & accepting it has allowed me to take back a lot of control over my life. Things weren't just happening to me... I was making choices, & I can make different ones.

I've chosen to forgive some people, & not to forgive others, but none of them look like monsters in my rear view mirror. They look like other humans, being human. Making choices. Being themselves.

With me safely being myself nowhere near them

I'd also like to acknowledge that the way I've used this site to talk about some of my own relationship problems, & the problems of those who are close to me (which was much more frequent btw) was immature. Laundry like that doesn't need a public airing, esp with 15k followers

So... yeah! I'm sorry about that. I was using twitter as a tool to cope with my own trauma without enough regard for the feelings of others, including those in my close personal circle and anyone reading this. That wasn't healthy, fair, or kind. That was toxic of me. No more.