Jamal Toussaint

About

People generally reach out when someone new starts to matter to them. Things are going well, which is exactly the difficulty, because closeness reactivates everything that was learned about what closeness costs. The better it goes, the louder the old material becomes. That paradox brings a lot of people through the door. Survivors often manage perfectly well alone and find that being cared for is what destabilizes them, which is bewildering and tends to be read as self-sabotage. It is not self-sabotage. It is an old prediction being triggered by new conditions, and predictions can be updated with evidence. My training was in research before I moved into the room, and I still think in terms of predictions and evidence, because that is really how a lot of this operates. If things going well is what unsettled you, get in touch. Being cared for is not supposed to be frightening, and it can stop being.