I used to chase accomplishment hard, and I dismissed soft skills and people skills entirely — mostly because I had no idea how to do them. I'd put on this dissociated charm self when I met new people, which wasn't connection at all. It was a disarming move. If I could charm you first, you couldn't get to me. Underneath all of it was a deep fear of being publicly rejected.

A close colleague of mine has the same wound and it looked nothing like that from the outside. Hers came out as passive aggression, eye rolls, indirect judgment, the quiet withdrawal of approval. Underneath: a deep fear of humiliation. Two different flavors of the same armor, both doing the same job of not letting anyone get close enough to make us feel small.

This is episode three of the attachment wounds and erotic emotions series, and it's about the trust wound — what happens when your openness got used against you, and you concluded you'd never be in that position again.

The paradox at the center of it: the erotic emotion people with this wound most often crave is the exact thing they've spent their lives defending against.

In this episode:

• Where the trust wound comes from, and why humiliation specifically drives manipulation as a coping response
• The two developmental paths, depending on how old you were when it happened
• What it feels like from the inside, including the constant low-level tracking of who has power in a room
• Why the powerful poles — revered, dominant, worshiped, unattainable — show up as the obvious turn-ons, and what's often underneath them
• How this shows up in relationships: guilt tripping, triangulation, passive aggression, and pseudo-connection
• Why the vulnerability play that can heal this needs serious aftercare, and what happens if you get dropped
• What actually changed for both me and my colleague, including what she discovered was a real turn-on

Vulnerability is not the thing that makes you vulnerable. Look around at how many people are working to avoid it. It isn't making them any safer. It's just keeping them from being known.

Topics: fear of humiliation, why is it so hard to be vulnerable, passive aggressive relationship, invulverable

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