Answer extracted from the MusterPoint Off the Clock podcast — listen to the full episode below.
Why do people sabotage healthy relationships after childhood trauma?
When childhood offers no model of healthy relationships—only transactional exchanges and abuse—the adult brain develops a warped comfort with chaos and toxicity. Genuine care and acceptance feel abnormal and unmanageable, while dysfunctional dynamics provide something to control and navigate, creating a psychological pattern where healthy love is perceived as bland or unsafe.
Mike Collison describes a foundational paradox: everything in his early life operated like an ATM transaction. There was no frame of reference for relationships built on genuine reciprocity, care, or emotional safety. When relationships lacked drama, conflict, or instability, his nervous system didn't recognize them as legitimate.
As a trades professional who spent nearly a decade on the rigs in Alberta, Mike's recovery journey in MusterPoint Off the Clock reveals how childhood patterns replayed in adulthood. At one point, he was in a genuinely loving and healthy relationship 15 years ago—but he destroyed it because it felt "too vanilla" and lacked the passion he associated with excitement. Looking back with clarity, he recognizes it was simply normal.
The mechanism is stark: in chaotic or toxic relationships, there is always something to manage, fix, or control. This gives the trauma-shaped mind a familiar role to play. Genuine acceptance and unconditional care, by contrast, demand vulnerability without a problem to solve—a state that can feel profoundly foreign and even threatening to someone whose survival once depended on hypervigilance and control.
"Without the ability to look in a mirror and see those things reflected back at you, until you can find someone else to walk that walk with you, you cannot heal."
Mike Collison — Oil rig worker and trades professional in recovery. Over a decade in the oil patch, Mike worked extended hitches of up to 78 straight days and 46 consecutive night shifts. He is now actively involved in a 12-step program, having transformed his relationship with substance use and embarked on deep inner work to address the childhood trauma that shaped his adult patterns.
This insight—that healing requires both self-awareness and relationship witness—underpins why sabotage happens. The chaotic person is comfortable in their own mirror because they've never seen anything else reflected. Mike's full conversation on the podcast explores how his 12 years of abstinence from hard drugs still allowed him to self-medicate with alcohol and cannabis, maintaining the same avoidance pattern—proof that the relationship dynamic transcends the substance itself.
For those curious about how specific life events—like the death of a pet in December 2019—can trigger cascading relapses into active addiction, the full episode delves into the machinery of grief and numbing, showing how unprocessed trauma continues to drive behavior long after sobriety begins.
Key takeaways
- Childhood environments devoid of healthy relationship models create a nervous system that recognizes chaos as normal and safety as abnormal.
- Toxic and dysfunctional dynamics offer something to manage or control, whereas genuine love demands vulnerability and acceptance—a deeply unfamiliar state for trauma survivors.
- Self-awareness alone is insufficient for healing; witnessing and support from another person who understands the journey is essential to break the cycle.
- The pattern of sabotage repeats across different contexts—substances, relationships, and risk-taking—because the underlying wound remains unprocessed.
See also
How did the loss of a pet trigger a relapse into active addiction after years of abstaining from hard drugs?
In 2019, when Mike's dog Ramsey died from aggressive cancer, he began using substances to numb the pain rather than to have fun as he had been doing. This marked a shift from recreational use to active escape.
What role does the culture of the oil and construction industries play in normalizing substance abuse?
Mike describes how in the oil patch and construction, drugs and drinking were an accepted part of life—it was actually weird if you didn't participate. The industry's culture reinforced and masked underlying trauma.
How does childhood trauma and abuse impact the development of addiction and risk-taking behavior in young people?
Mike explains that going through abuse left a void inside him that he didn't know how to fill. Without acknowledgement of the trauma and without someone to walk that walk with you, the void persists and drives risky behavior.