The Quiet Moment

why love becomes pain: trauma reenactment & emotional distortion


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When love starts purebut ends in pain —you’re likely witnessing a trauma reenactment.

🌀 Trauma reenactment is when your nervous system subconsciously recreates old emotional wounds✧ not to relive them — but to try to resolve them✧ you chase healing by repeating the familiar✧ except this time… you think maybe it will end differently

🌪️ This leads to love distortion:✧ You confuse emotional intensity with intimacy✧ You equate control with care✧ You become hyper-alert to danger — even when you’re safe✧ You project abandonment onto neutrality

🧠 Why it happens:✧ The brain favors familiarity over health✧ Unresolved attachment wounds distort what feels safe✧ If pain is what you knew, love will feel unsafe until you unlearn the pattern

💔 So even when we mean well,we unconsciously recreate the shape of our pain —and call it love.

But here’s the hope:

✧ Love doesn’t have to be what we inherited.✧ Safety can be relearned.✧ Intimacy doesn’t have to be dramatic to be real.

We just have to notice when the pain is speaking louder than the person we’re trying to love.

✧ soft anchor:

You are not broken.You’re just used to pain pretending to be love.

🌒 return to the real:

read: how does love turn into pain?reflect: pain that pretends to be love



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit irisisquietly.substack.com
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The Quiet MomentBy for who you are and who you're still becoming.