When Trauma And Pain Show Up As Crazy In Relationships

My daughter asked me recently where the term ‘bunny boiler’ comes from.

I laughed, as I recalled Glenn Close’s psychotic character in ‘Fatal Attraction‘ and how, after the huge success of the film in the 80s, any female who demonstrated a glimmer of insecure behaviour was labelled a bunny boiler,  relating to the scene where the neurotic, mental, scorned woman exacts revenge on her lover by literally boiling his daughter’s new pet rabbit.

We love an 80s film fest here, and that conversation resulted in us as a family, watching Fatal Attraction that evening, with me laughing at my daughters jumping off the sofa as the deranged Alex Forest resurrects from the bath in a final attempt to kill the object of all her torment.

Incredibly, even 3 decades later, I still remembered almost every scene. But this time, I watched with completely new eyes.

For years I have flippantly used the term ‘bunny boiler’ when chatting to friends about someone’s ‘crazy’ behaviour. The married Mum up the school who stalked  one of the married Dads; the friend who can’t come out for a drink without crying over the ex who jilted her 15 years ago.

I have had one friend who was obsessively jealous of her partner’s relationship with his Mother. Another friend who drunkenly got with a guy we met in a pub and ended up being carried out as she was sobbing she’d never loved anyone that much before. How we laughed at the time. It’s so easy to judge, especially when we don’t understand the behaviours or what’s driving them.

And it’s always easier to see from an outside perspective. For years I listened to one of my oldest friends as she explained the latest reason why her married lover couldn’t leave his wife just yet. It was exasperating! If I ever attempted to point out what was blatantly obvious to everyone else, she would insist we didn’t understand, and that they were soul mates.

Ironically, during the exact same time period, this same friend would say to me how she felt I was repeating my old patterns with my latest love, and how she was concerned with some of his behaviour and treatment of me. She didn’t understand! He hadn’t dated for years, having been in a loveless marriage for many, was out of practice, had lost his confidence, needed me to help him. He was busy, so often forgot to ring, he only lied to protect me, blah, blah, blah. I didn’t even tell anyone about the dark moods, and abuse.

I liken it to the analogy of the tree. If you are hugging a huge oak tree trunk, and look up into its branches and leaves, you won’t see the blackbird sitting on the top. You will only view that from a distance. It’s so much easier to see where someone else is going wrong, than with ourselves. Especially when we don’t understand the needs and emotions driving their ‘crazy’ behaviour.

If you have acted ‘crazy’ in a relationship, it is highly possible that you are carrying wounds that have never been worked through and tend to get activated in the same setting in which they developed – intimate relationships.

So watching the movie this time round, I viewed Alex in a completely different light. Sometimes with horror, as now I try to be congruent with myself, and take accountability, I put my hands up and admit I have acted so nuts in my past.

Examples include lying to elicit sympathy and attention; stalking (not excessively but yes, a quick detour on my way home, every night, to drive-by a home of the latest object of my affection); drunken, angry, passive-aggressive rants out of the blue at someone from my past who had wronged me.

I was the ultimate bunny boiler!

And so mostly I now viewed Alex with complete compassion and empathy. The movie is set up to elicit sympathy for poor Michael Douglas’s character and his family. And repulsion, and horror for Glenn Close’s. That’s the way it is.  But actually, how much pain must she have been in to behave in such an irrational way?

Of course, these are fictional characters. But we all know ‘crazy chicks’ (and men) and seen headlines of obsessed women sentenced for harassment after sending 100s of texts a day, or smashing an ex-lover’s windscreen with a hammer during a fit of rage.

Yes, there will be genuine narcissistic/sociopathic abusers/stalkers, and we can be really quick to judge, without knowing the whole story. But often, ‘crazy’ behaviour is a symptom of trauma and pain.

Beneath every behaviour is a feeling. And beneath every feeling is a need.

From the moment we are born we start to develop a sense of self and belonging. We start to develop an idea of who we are, how others feel about us, and where we fit in the world.

Our first feelings and ideas of ‘self’ come from the relationship we have with our main caregivers.

If we had emotionally healthy parents and felt loved and secure at home, we will grow up secure and will have secure adult relationships.

But if we grew up with any type of trauma, rejection, neglect, abuse, or abandonment, where we don’t learn to build a secure sense of self, then we will grow up anxious and insecure and will have difficulty trusting others and ourselves.

Most of the time, people who act “crazy” are subconsciously playing out their childhood wounds. These wounds need to be worked through; otherwise, they continue to manifest over and over again with every new relationship. Have you heard the quote ‘ You will keep meeting the same person in different bodies until you learn the lesson’?  I certainly did that!

Craziness is simply pain projected outward.

So for me, and without realising it, I had a deep fear of abandonment and rejection. My father (a narcissist), left when I was 5 years old, leaving my mother to bring up myself and my sister, but with her own unhealed wounds (why she attracted narcissists) and never having learned to be emotionally available herself.

The result was me being a very anxious ambivalent attachment; codependent; needy; clingy. I was always aware of something deep inside being wrong with me. I have a distinct memory of crying to my first long term boyfriend aged 13, that there was something wrong with me. And again over 30 years later, to my final abusive ex.

With a couple of exceptions, I was mainly attracted to selfish, emotionally unavailable, abusive narcissists, just like my father. And launched straight into the same codependent pattern of focusing obsessively on them so I didn’t have to address my own issues, and suffocating them with love because I didn’t feel worthy of theirs. Associating love with pain, I was unconsciously reenacting my childhood trauma.

Many of us subconsciously choose partners that will play the specific role we want them to play so that we can continue to relive our past with the hope of having a different outcome, thereby healing our old wounds. It doesn’t work.

If I didn’t receive the response I desired, my bunny boiler behaviour really would kick in. Fuelled by fear and pain, the angry rants would start (usually when drinking); leaving (in an attempt to force a reaction), then returning with begging, chasing, lying. I didn’t care how insane I looked. The fear of being alone, being rejected or being abandoned was too great. I would rather die. Literally. It took a suicide attempt and me hitting rock bottom to finally really look at myself.

I could no longer live with the reality I had carelessly (but repetitively) crafted for myself. I had to learn to take responsibilities for my actions and had to learn to rewire my brain into accepting my role in every circumstance of my life.

At some point we have to accept our past, our less than perfect childhoods, and we need to seek help so we can heal the wounds that haunt our adult lives.

Yes, the people I dated and surrounded myself with were mainly toxic and abusive. But there was a reason I attracted them, and was attracted to them. And something in their childhood must have happened to them to make them behave this way to others.

Healing isn’t linear. It can be tough. For me it took therapy, friendships, reading, meditation, and writing. It became addictive. My first ‘healthy’ addiction after so many self-destructive.

As I learned to control my impulses and erratic behavior, I felt my inner strength for the first time.

Waking up is hard. It requires us to look deep into ourselves and confront our darkness. But gradually as we come out of the FOG (fear/obligation/guilt) and enter the conscious world of compassion, curiosity, empathy, and self-love, the feeling of absolute joy and fulfilment taking the place of where those inner wounds have been for so long, makes it all worth it.

Andrea x