@Mountaindewed - I've done this a lot. Sometimes I would even call or text or email someone and ask if I did something wrong - especially if I dissociated a lot and couldn't remember my actions. Of course, I'd only ask questions to those I trusted. More times than not, I did NOT do anything wrong.

What I would venture to bet is that our worries in this area pertain to us getting in trouble for the slightest things, which is a form of psychological abuse as well as emotional neglect. The abusive part is being punished for doing something that all kids do, such as crying, whining, spilling the milk, etc. Being punished for not watching my younger sister when my drunken father was too inebriated to care for us is another example of psychological abuse. The neglect part is that our parents neglected to show us emotional comfort, dealing with consequences of our actions, dealing with emotion regulation through parental warmth and lesson-learning, etc. When both neglect and abuse coexist, and when our childhood settings were so inconsistent to the point that we didn't know what the rules were to keep our parents happy and the punishments down, it became a hostile, traumatic, and sometimes even terrorizing environment for us. When this atmosphere is repeated over and over, as well as mixed in with physical or sexual abuse, harsh verbal abuse, harsh restrictions of needs such as food or medical care after a beating, then dissociation is much more likely.

As adults, we experience trauma triggers whenever we see things that are out of the ordinary, such as with this pandemic. There are so many changes of rules that it seems similar to the unpredictability of our abusive and neglectful parents. Additionally, when our coworkers or bosses or landlords or even family members act in unpredictable ways, even though subtle and not harmful, it can still trigger those bad memories from the past. So our natural response to unpredictability is to sense danger and possibly dissociate, and then wonder what we did wrong (even if we didn't do anything wrong). That's the painful reality of our past.

Now this might be a lot to take it, and maybe it doesn't apply to you. But we just thought we'd explain the real deal instead of touching on this lightly. Nothing about the times we live in is "light." There are warnings everywhere, and it's challenging to deal with on a daily or even annual basis. We're now going into the third year of this pandemic, which stirs up so many emotions and behavioral reactions from people. It's hard for us with past histories of trauma as well as dissociation to deal with all this stimuli. It's too much.

Our childhood minds were so used to blaming ourselves that we never learned that sometimes nothing is our fault, and that we do the best we can with the freedoms we have.

I hope this brings some comfort, even though some of this might be hard to take in.

((((safe hugs)))))