Please note: Entry contains references to instances of domestic abuse, dating abuse, sexual assault, abuse or harassment. I encourage you to take whatever precautions necessary to seek help for emotional and psychological safety.  If you would like to speak with an advocate , please contact a 24/7 Break the Cycle peer advocate at 866-331-9474  or text “loveis” to 22522.

When we think about breaking a cycle, what comes to mind? Do we think about what makes us the way we are? The choices that we make? The choices we don’t want to make?

I feel like many times breaking the cycle brings to mind a sort of reaction we have after we have been exposed to so many problems. It often has little to do with premeditative action, prevention. However, the reality is that we often don’t have the tools to prevent until we have already gained some experience. And failed.

Recently I’ve realized how the first step to breaking a cycle of familial and relationship violence is to teach the proper way to love. Ironically, I reached this conclusion after reflecting on the lessons and messages I got about relationships while growing up within my family. I became aware of how those lessons and examples have continually crept up in my relationships. And it’s no coincidence.

My aunt said it best. The message came in a scold directed at her son. My cousin is an active kid. He’s very loving and very physical, which is normal in young children as they are molded by their environment to conform whatever cultural standards exist in regards to boundaries in their families and communities. You see, my 3 year old cousin had been getting too rough with his dog. Luckily, the dog is old and fairly patient – instead of retaliating, he runs from my cousin when he goes too far. In this case, he was chasing, grabbing, and kicking at the dog, thinking he was playing. My aunt intervened quickly, saying, “When you love someone, you don’t hurt them!”

This was a brilliant teaching moment (as a teacher, I was taking notes) – especially since our reaction to this type of behavior is usually a knee-jerk sort of threat or positive punishment to teach the child a lesson by means of intimidation. Do as I say, not as I do.

Yet in my aunts’ household, I saw a very different narrative unfold. Lessons were taught, as we idealize, with love. Firmness off-set with compassion. The example of two loving mothers who value their child more than anything else in the world. The lessons of those that really want to avoid the mistakes made and perpetuated against them in their own childhoods or those of people they know.

This, to me, is how you break a cycle. By teaching the right lessons, the right ways. And by unlearning old lessons and habits. This is a part of becoming a fully mature individual, and it is a process, easier said than done.

I have often reflected over the last few years on just how little I saw healthy relationships modeled as a child. My parents were the type that chose to stay together out of mutual dependency – and perhaps a greater fear of being alone or going through traumatizing experiences from their own past again (or putting us, the children, through them, as is usually and ironically the case). They were trying to fix past wrongs, the wrong way. Without mindfulness.

Meanwhile, my siblings and I were sent mixed signals throughout our childhood of what it meant to love and the appropriate way to treat the ones we love. We were expected to comply to rules which we were given with no place to question or encourage the development of our personalities – what religion we should practice, what sorts of friends we should have, the ways we should express our emotions, the things that were and were not taboo to discuss openly. So many shadows, so much confusion.

Corporal punishment and domestic violence lend themselves to these strange, tense emotional landscapes. They are perpetuated usually by those children that experienced those same things growing up, those that would be responsible for breaking the cycle. Those that should know – it has been proven that these methods and conditions do nothing to develop empathetic, healthy human beings. Yet when a child behaves in a spoiled or entitled way, we assume they had never been spanked in their life. In spite of knowing they were raised badly, the victims often become the perpetrators.

The contradictions accumulate. Each day my mom would reset, my dad would reset, no matter how bad the night before may have been. Nothing was worth risking their bonds – or bondage – of matrimony. And we all got to suffer together. That builds character, or so they say. When you suffer for someone, that proves you love them unconditionally. Right?

That narrative is the one I see being avoided by mature, healthy individuals like my aunts that remember that love is taught by example and through clear intention and reciprocity. It’s as simple as reinforcing what my aunt said: if you love someone, you shouldn’t hurt them. Nobody wants to be hurt. And nobody deserves to endure that because love somehow can justify it.

I look back on my own experiences within the past years, and I recognize how much I have struggled to figure out the proper way to communicate, to define boundaries, to share love, and most importantly, to love myself enough to know when I am simply repeating old lessons I never realized I was taught and knew by heart. Being in a culture different yet so similar to my own background, a small town, a rural closedmindedness, a Roman Catholic dogma underneath – I thought I was prepared, but I was not.

When you grow up in a state of fear, you begin to create bonds on the base of trauma. When it appears in your relationship, there’s at first a sense of shock and outrage which if left too long can turn into a twisted sense of normalcy – I’ve seen this before. I know what this is. But I don’t – how was it that you should handle this?

In my last relationship, the fear and tension escalated in a way I could have never anticipated, even though I felt anxious as I began to open up to him. My ex reflected attitudes that I realized, subtly, reminded me of my dad in the way that he treated me and my mother when I was young. This wasn’t something that attracted me to him, but it was familiar. And it only started to become apparent after the honeymoon phase faded and reality slowly started to creep up in the worst way – once we were living together. I came to abhor it, but there was something in the familiarity. The constant struggle. The unyielding, visceral toxicity. It was a slow-acting poison, and by the time it got really bad, I feared I was in too deep.

In relationships like this, we gloss things over. I watched my mom do it everyday. I learned how to do it. Every day I got to school, I became a different person. I thought, how strange, am I bipolar (dramatic preteen me had also been gaslighted into thinking that 1, there was something wrong with me, and 2, that if I were mentally ill, I must automatically be a bad person, so asking myself this question, while silly, was also something that produced its own sense of unease and dread) – why was it so easy for me to put on a smile around my friends when I spent all of my time fighting constant battles at home, watching my parents fight, fighting and picking fights because I couldn’t stand to feel weak?

So when I finally began to realize just how abusive my last relationship was (which did not take to long to figure out; the fear and anxiety were immediately apparent and all of the warning signs I ignored up to the point seemed as constant as the chronic pain I carry in my back), I became confused. I knew I didn’t want that. But as has happened many a time with me, I didn’t know how to walk away without this intense anxiety attached to it, this regret or fear I would regret removing someone from my life. This need to fix things, somehow.

But you see, this wasn’t something I was born with. People that get stuck in abusive relationships are not inherently weak. What happens is their vulnerability derives itself from years of invisible reinforcement. Invisible because most don’t realize it’s happening – not even the parents. And yet the seeds get planted deeply, and the roots can run deep if there are no positive role models to help fill this emotional void.

Unsurprisingly, the perpetuator of the violence – physical, psychological, and emotional – had once been a victim of these same acts. And to my horror, I began to realize he idealized his childhood. He had no interest in breaking the cycle. He had no interest in being better. Empty promises covered bruises, and it seemed like I was getting buried within a blackhole, a vortex-like vicious cycle. The cycle I had promised myself to break.

I’ve never talked publicly about all of this. I’ve always been afraid it would seem like I was whining or saying poor me or dramatizing my own life or something. But lately I’ve been having these conversations again and again, with close friends, with relatives, with my own parents who now realize the consequences of their unconscious actions and modeling. And the truth is, there’s something to be said about how insidiously we learn how to behave without any explicit teaching. Although nobody told me to put up with abuse or to put love above my own health or welfare – that’s the behavior I saw and mimicked daily growing up. All of my female role models were in these sorts of relationships. As a child, without context, thirsty for the one thing all people thirst for – love and acceptance and an identity – I found myself contradicting the messages I received, hating them, and yet acting them out in my daily life.

Until it snowballed and I realized, through therapy and self-reflection and just a more open environment where people actually talk about these very real, very common issues, that in order to do better, we have to confront the lessons we learned subconsciously. We have to look for separate narratives. And we have to take on the role of educator as well. We have to prioritize and protect our peace.

I still have a fear of falling into those patterns again. They seemed so ingrained in me, the anxiety can be almost unbearable. But I know there is strength in honesty. By creating a discussion about this, I’m performing a personal exercise, yes, by acknowledging something I’ve often denied or been told wasn’t valid or real in spite of the very real consequences. But I also want to open myself to hear other people’s stories and to help them and to encourage them to see that no matter what anyone says, the cycle of abuse you have been trapped in is not your fault. And it doesn’t have to be sempiternal. There are ways to get out and to become more mindful.

And I know how easy it is to get stuck. How innate these patterns become in our lives. And if you’re struggling with this, I want you to know, you aren’t weak. You aren’t alone. You just weren’t taught the lessons you needed to know in order to set boundaries, in order to communicate, in order to express your needs and listen to those of others. The ways in which we need to give and receive respect. Or maybe you were taught but the lessons were muddied with other forms of abuse. Whatever the case might be, everyone’s struggle is valid. Everyone needs validation. Everyone needs to feel heard. And with that knowledge, we can all step a little closer to learning how to love the right way and to teach the right lessons to those who look to us for answers.

Why open up about this now?

During this past month, I have been tried, but I’ve also been taught. It has been strangely uplifting in all of its frenetic, unpredictable vulnerability. Truth be told, I hate feeling vulnerable. I hate being pushed out of my comfort zone involuntarily. I leave my own comfort zone all the time. That doesn’t mean I like the pressure that comes with external, unexpected circumstances.

In spite of not being where I wanted to be, everything seemed to fall into place. And this lesson crystalized itself more and more during the month of October. To love is not to fear, yet so often we are taught by those we love through fear, it is the tool that shapes us. But this month, something inside me has been awakening slowly but surely. The strength of others inspires me and makes me want to believe in my own strength. I want to acknowledge the worth I so often refused to give myself. And that’s powerful, but for many people, accepting and loving ourselves is a daily struggle.

Just know that you aren’t alone. And if you fear judgment by people you know, look for a safe person, a therapist, someone that can help you see through the prison you’ve been locked in and can help you pick the lock and be free.

Breaking a cycle is not always taking preventative measures. Sometimes we fail – we’re human. But we can always ask for help and learn from our own mistakes and those of the people we believed were infallible in our childhood. It’s just a matter of learning to discriminate between the right and wrong lessons and ways of teaching them.

For more resources: https://www.breakthecycle.org/blog/it%E2%80%99s-national-domestic-violence-awareness-month