With sensitivity and care, I want to talk about a painful topic today. Then I want to apply it to political realities we are facing. If this rings too close to home, it’s okay to close this and not read it.
It’s this: When children are harmed by adults early in their lives, they can grow into adulthood accepting, tolerating, and even justifying harm that continues to come their way.
In these situations, harm can become normalized. It can sink into narratives that a person has carried for a very long time. Or it can take the form of repetition compulsion, a pattern that trauma and post-trauma can create. A therapist I follow online says, “We repeat what we have not resolved.” If we haven’t had the opportunity or the tools to work through these experiences of harm, we may be at a disadvantage in seeing them clearly and avoiding them.
This is not the only way this can unfold, of course, and it should never be assumed across all people or situations. And even when harm toward the self has become normalized in someone’s thinking, no one enduring that harm should be blamed for experiencing it. Ever. That is important to name clearly.
But here’s where I’m going with this: I want to explore the connection between dynamics that can form in childhood and the ways those dynamics might shape how some people relate to authority later in life. More specifically, I want to consider how this might be playing out, for some people, in their support of our current administration. This is not a universal explanation, but one possible way that such support can emerge and remain intact.
When children are harmed by adults they should be able to trust — through mistreatment, bullying, neglect, or abuse — they often blame themselves rather than those adults. Even though self-blame in childhood leaves deep scars, we can understand why it happens. It is harmful, yes, but it can feel more survivable than believing that the adults they depend on are unsafe.
It is psychologically intolerable for a child to believe that the people they rely on for care are dangerous. So instead, the narrative becomes: “I shouldn’t have done that, so I deserved it,” or “I must be bad.”
In other words, this logic takes root: “I can’t handle them being bad, so they must be good.”
Journalist Stacey Patton describes it this way:
A young child’s brain is not built to evaluate whether a parent or caregiver is fair, cruel, or abusive. A child’s brain is built to protect the attachment relationship at all costs.
From a developmental perspective, the parent or caregiver is the child’s food source, shelter, safety system, and emotional regulation system. If that relationship breaks, the child’s survival is threatened.
Because of that, the developing brain performs a very specific psychological maneuver when harm comes from that adult. Instead of concluding “the adult is wrong,” the child’s brain concludes “I must be wrong.” This is a neurological survival strategy.
Developmental psychologists call this “defensive attribution.” The brain assigns blame to the self because blaming the caregiver would create unbearable terror. If the adult who feeds you, houses you, and keeps you alive is dangerous and unpredictable, the world becomes psychologically unlivable for a child.
She goes on to say:
Once the brain builds a narrative that links love with pain and authority with violence, it can shape how someone understands discipline, relationships, and even justice. What began as a survival explanation can become a whole worldview: that people in power have the right to hurt those beneath them.
Again, whether children or adults, no one being harmed or abused deserves it. Not if they have internalized this logic. Not if they stay. Not if they blame themselves. Not if they try to justify what is happening to them.
And yet, we can see how this pattern forms. It often takes deep awareness and meaningful support to move in different directions. This worldview can persist, extending into workplaces, spiritual communities, romantic relationships, and friendships.
And increasingly, I find myself wondering… could this also shape how some people relate to our current administration?
I’ve had conversations with people I know personally, and in those discussions, I’ve discovered we share common ground. They’ve said Medicaid should not be defunded. Racism is evil. Lying about elections is wrong.
And yet some of these very same people, people I care about, still believe that leaders in our administration are patriotic and genuinely care for the American people. They say things like, “He never sleeps. He’s always working for us,” and they believe this administration can be trusted.
I find myself wondering: could this reflect that same internal logic?
“I can’t tolerate the idea that those in authority might be harmful, so they must be good.”
Or perhaps:
“I can’t tolerate the idea that I voted for this three times, so it must not be harmful.”
I don’t know.
And of course, there are plenty of people who genuinely do believe Medicaid should be defunded, that white people are superior, and that the 2020 election was stolen.
But I wonder if, for some people, there may be something deeper at play. It is still totally complicit. This harm does not only wound the self. It is actively harming and traumatizing many people, especially those who are most vulnerable.
But when it comes to the underlying logic, for some people, perhaps this is connected to something formed long ago. It is a way of making sense of harm that once helped them survive.
Is this showing up now, like this?
Increasingly, I wonder.
And I hope that what has been learned can also be unlearned.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 