Yes. It is far more common than people realize to love an abusive caregiver.
When a caregiver causes harm, the child’s nervous system doesn’t stop needing them. Trauma creates a painful contradiction: love and fear can exist side by side. A caregiver may have frightened you, neglected you, or failed to protect you — and still been the person you depended on for survival. Both experiences live in the same nervous system.
Children need their caregivers to be “good” enough to survive. So the mind learns to hold two truths at once: this person hurts me, and I need them. That clash of love and pain is the mind doing what it had to do to keep going.
If you still feel attachment, that doesn’t mean you wanted the abuse, deserved it, or were not harmed by it. It means you are wired for connection, even in unsafe places.
This page is part of the Attachment Trauma Dynamics section of the CommuniDID site, which explains why survivors may still love, protect, or feel responsible for people who harmed them.
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