Lately, I’ve been struggling with a feeling that’s hard to put into words—like a constant gnawing discomfort in the pit of my stomach. I’ve spent years doing the work, the deep, messy, sometimes painful work to heal from trauma, to learn how to stay safe and thrive in the world. I thought I had made progress, that I had finally found a place of balance, of security. But recently, I’ve found myself facing an overwhelming sense of confusion and betrayal by the very people I thought I could trust, the ones I believed would be my safe spaces.
What’s worse, the betrayal isn’t just in the actions of others. It’s in the feeling that I missed something along the way, that somehow, in my quest to learn how to protect myself, I failed to see the cracks in the people I allowed close. The people I thought would be different. The people I believed had good intentions and would be honest.
In the throes of disillusionment, I keep coming back to a quote by Carl Jung, which feels like it also betrayed me. "The first test of a person's courage is not the facing of an external danger, but rather confronting oneself." It sounds simple, doesn't it? The idea that courage isn’t about fighting battles out there but rather about diving into our vulnerabilities—our flaws, our insecurities, our shadows. The courage to look inward and embrace what we might fear most about ourselves.
I thought that was the hardest thing. I thought that, once I had done the internal work, once I had faced the parts of myself that had been buried under the weight of trauma, I would have the strength to face anything, and to trust others without fear. But what I’ve realized lately is that I’m far more afraid of what I’ve discovered in other people than what I find when I step inside myself.
The truth is, the more I’ve learned to trust myself and my own resilience, the more vulnerable I’ve allowed myself to be with others. And that vulnerability—while it’s a gift in so many ways—has also left me open to hurt in ways I didn’t anticipate.
It’s like I’ve learned to stand on solid ground within myself, but the ground outside me? It feels shaky. I thought I could count on certain people, and when that trust is shaken, the fear I feel is different. It’s not the kind of fear that arises from my own shadows, but the kind that comes from seeing others—people I cared about—act in ways that don’t align with the values I believed they held.
It’s a terrifying thing, to discover that people can hurt you so easily, especially when you’ve worked so hard to create a life built on safety, trust, and growth. I find myself questioning everything I thought I knew about others, about relationships, and about how to navigate the world in a way that doesn’t leave me constantly on guard.
It's not just the fear of being hurt again. It's the fear that my abusers were right, that they were trying to reveal harsh truths about a cruel world they couldn't protect me from, and I was naive enough to believe they were "narcissists" and that the world wasn't like that. But it is. It is. Narcissistic traits might have offered me more protection in this world. For the millionth time, I narrow my eyes and resolve to be less empathetic, to develop cognitive empathy, and relearn how to dissociate again. I want to go back, to be less happy but more functional, to put the lion back in the cage.
But that's not how this works, is it?
It’s terrifying not being able to tell the difference between the safe people and those who will betray me, even when I think I know them. I feel like I want to crawl away, to become very small, to stop taking chances, to stop trying.
I wonder, then, if this means I have failed the test of courage. Have I failed to face my own fear regarding trusting others? Jung believed that courage was found in confronting ourselves, but it feels like the courage to trust—especially when I've been hurt—is much harder to come by. Maybe I've done all this work to become strong within myself, only to find it's the world outside—other people—that feels unpredictable, frightening, and unreliable.
It's confusing because a part of me recognizes that I have done the hard work, I have healed so much, and I have grown. Then there's this other part of me that is angry, feels betrayed, isn't sure who to trust, and doesn't feel any closer to understanding the rules of this stupid game. And I just want a break. I could use a break from everything happening all the time and never have a moment between overwhelming waves of crisis to rest.
Tomorrow I will take a deep breath, I will dry my eyes, and say something like: it's all part of the journey—to learn that healing doesn't necessarily go smoothly and that even after we've confronted ourselves. But the truth is, for a late-identified autistic adult like me, sometimes it feels like the world will never be safe. There's still so much to learn about others, vulnerability, and where we place my trust.
But today I don't want to be human. I want to be bog moss. Please leave me alone.
I don't have all the answers, but what I am beginning to understand is that this too is part of the work: standing by ourselves and holding firm to our ideals when things feel unstable. And, unfortunately, learning to accept that betrayal—whatever the pain thereof—is sometimes an inevitable part of having the ability to trust.
It doesn't erase the progress I've made, but right now in those holes where I planted the seeds of confidence, my heart still aches with doubt and fear. I wish the world would let me take a break and cry in the forest for a week or two before I was expected to be a person again.
Take care of yourselves. And heck today... can you take care of me, too? If you've got the spoons for it. I'm tired of always doing it myself.
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