It’s often a question that comes out with a sigh. Sometimes it happens in the very first session; sometimes it takes months of digging before it feels safe enough to say out loud. But eventually, for so many high-functioning, incredibly capable people walking through our doors, the frustration bubbles over:
“Why am I so smart in every other area of my life, but I keep choosing people who are so bad for me?”
Or, the harsher version: “What is wrong with me?”
I want to start by saying something that might feel a little counterintuitive: Nothing is wrong with you.
If you find yourself repeatedly drawn to partners who are emotionally unavailable, volatile, or unsafe, it’s not because you have a “broken picker.” It’s actually because your nervous system is working exactly the way it was designed to.
In fact, understanding this is often the first step in Trauma Therapy. When we look at the big picture—specifically when we explore “What Is Complex Trauma (C‑PTSD) and How Does It Show Up in Adult Life?”—we start to see that these relationship patterns aren’t failures. They are survival maps.
Your brain isn’t trying to hurt you. It’s trying to keep you safe in the only way it knows how. But the good news? You can draw a new map.
Why do I push people away when they get close to me?
Pushing people away is rarely about being cold; it is a protective mechanism. If past experiences taught you that relying on others leads to pain, your brain learned that safety equals self-reliance. You push others away to keep your “protective shield” intact so you cannot get hurt again.
Does this sound familiar? You meet someone who is kind, interested, and available. But the moment they try to get really close—maybe they talk about the future or try to support you when you’re down—you get the sudden urge to run. You might even get what the internet calls “the ick.” Suddenly, the way they chew or how they text becomes unbearable.
In the therapy room, we often see this in the “strong friend.” You know the type (or maybe you are the type). You handle everything. You never ask for help. And when someone tries to help you, it feels suffocating.
This is your nervous system doing a really good job of protecting you. Somewhere along the way, you likely experienced a lack of response or disengagement from the people who were supposed to care for you. You learned that crying out for help didn’t matter—you’d just end up on your own anyway. So, your brain wrote a rule: “If I need no one, no one can let me down.”
It’s a lonely place to be, but it feels safe. Unlearning this means slowly teaching your body that letting someone in doesn’t mean losing yourself.
Why am I so clingy? (And why do I also sometimes push people away?)
“Clinginess” is often protest behavior—a frantic attempt to re-establish a threatened connection, usually stemming from inconsistent caregiving. If you experience both clinging and pushing away, it often results from adapting to different parenting styles (inconsistent vs. disengaged), creating a scrambled safety map.
Let’s be gentle with the word “clingy.” It often carries so much shame, but it really shouldn’t. Usually, this comes from growing up with inconsistency.
If your caregivers were sometimes there and warm, but other times distracted or unavailable, your brain never knew what to expect. You learned to be hyper-vigilant, always checking the temperature of the room. You learned that you had to work hard—cry louder, achieve more, stay closer—to ensure your needs were met. So now, if a partner doesn’t text back immediately, your internal alarm system screams, “This is it! They are leaving just like before!”
But what if you experience both?
This is something we see a lot at True North. One minute you are desperate for their attention, and the next minute you feel overwhelmed and want them to leave you alone.
This often happens if you had to adapt to very different parenting styles. Maybe you had one parent who was inconsistent (teaching you to cling out of fear), while the other was disengaged or unresponsive (teaching you to disconnect because it didn’t matter anyway).
Your brain ends up with a scrambled map. Connection feels necessary for survival, but also terrifying. It’s an exhausting push-pull dance, but understanding why it happens is the first step to stopping the music.
How do I stop repeating relationship patterns that feel unhealthy or unsafe?
You stop by understanding the familiarity principle. The human brain prioritizes familiarity (what is known) over what is unknown (even if what is unknown is or may be good). You keep ending up in toxic relationships because your brain recognizes the chaos as “home.” Breaking the pattern means learning to tolerate the “boredom” of a healthy relationship.
Think of it like a road trip. If you grew up in a chaotic environment where you had to perform to be loved, your brain created a map of that terrain. It says, “This is what love looks like. I know how to navigate this.”
So, when you meet someone healthy—someone consistent, honest, and calm—your brain looks at the map and says, “Wait. I don’t recognize this road. Turn around!”
To your nervous system, a healthy relationship can actually feel boring or even anxiety-inducing because there is no fight to win. There is no chaos to manage. It’s the classic sentiment that “the devil you know is better than the angel you don’t.”
Breaking the pattern means learning to tolerate the “boredom” of a healthy, safe relationship until it starts to feel normal. It’s about being brave enough to sit with the discomfort of being treated well. And that is often way harder than it sounds. It takes practice to retrain your brain to see calm as safe, rather than boring.
Can trauma therapy really help with my relationship problems, trust issues, or fear of getting close to people?
Yes. While logic helps you understand what is happening, trauma therapy helps change how your body reacts. Therapies like EMDR help “unhook” the past from the present and rewire your internal alarm system, allowing you to build a solid relationship with yourself so you stop accepting crumbs from others.
We can’t just think our way out of these patterns. If we could, you—being the smart, capable person you are—would have done it by now. These reactions live in your body, not just your mind. That’s why you might know a partner is safe logically, but your chest still feels tight.
At True North, we don’t look at therapy as a place to just vent about your week or blame your parents. We look at it as a laboratory for your life.
Therapies like EMDR or attachment-focused work help rewire your internal alarm system. We help you unhook the past from the present so you aren’t carrying old baggage into your dates. We help you learn what it feels like to set a boundary without guilt.
Most importantly, we help you build a relationship with yourself that is so solid, you stop accepting crumbs from others because you know you’re already full.
Folding Up the Old Map
Here is the bottom line: You are not broken. You are just operating on an outdated map.
That map served a purpose once. It got you through some really hard things. It kept you safe when you were small. We don’t have to hate the old map. We can thank it for its service, fold it up, and put it in the glovebox.
But you deserve a new map now.
You deserve a love that doesn’t require you to abandon yourself to keep it. You deserve a relationship that feels like a calm harbor, not a stormy sea.
If you’re ready to start drawing that new map, you don’t have to do it alone. At True North Therapy & Wellness, we’re pretty good at helping you find your way. Request an Appointment today.
About the Author
Jessica Draughn is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with 15 years of experience supporting clients in West Des Moines, Iowa. As the founder of True North Therapy & Wellness, she specializes in working with adults impacted by complex trauma, anxiety, and difficult relationship patterns. She is an EMDRIA Certified EMDR Therapist, a designation reflecting her advanced training in trauma treatment, and integrates complementary modalities including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) to help clients find relief and stability.
At True North Therapy & Wellness, Jessica provides in-person individual therapy for adult clients, focusing on rewiring old survival maps so they can move beyond “just surviving.” Her approach is grounded in the belief that you aren’t broken—you’re just off-path, and she uses her breadth of clinical experience to help you find your way back to a fuller, more authentic life.