Sometimes Hurt People Hurt People

As a shelter volunteer, I’m on The Cuddle Crew. As the name suggests, our job is to cuddle. We earn the trust of traumatised dogs so they can find their forever homes. It’s our job to teach them that humans can be good.

I soon learned why the cuddlers wore protective gear. You get bitten. You leave the shelter covered in bruises.

Cuddling is a lot more dangerous than walking. Dogs with PTSD do weird things. The closer you get, the more teeth you’re exposed to. Hurt dogs hurt people, and shelters have an awful lot of hurt dogs. Hurt people hurt people, too. It’s so widely known it’s become a cliché, but I’m not sure anyone ever finds out how this plays out in the real world. As a de facto hurt person, I can help with that.

I hurt people when I feel I'm being abandoned and experience a psychic wound.

I hurt people when I'm too traumatised to express myself clearly.

I hurt people when I'm too traumatised to interpret reality rationally.

I hurt people when they see my pain.

There’s no excuse for collateral damage. If a hurt person ever abuses you, I believe you should leave. If you choose to be with a hurt human who doesn’t lash out at you, though, please give them a little grace when they're clumsy. When you have a missing leg, you can’t walk like a regular dog, and when you have missing self-esteem, you can’t function like a regular human.

I don’t have to be on the Cuddle Team, and you don’t have to love a hurt human. If you choose to do so, please try to understand that being a hurt person is like living in fog. There is a great barrier between you and the rest of the world, and you can’t see as clearly as you might like. That cloudy barrier is fear. It’s trauma. It’s not aggression or hatred.

The Cuddle Crew has been trying to rehabilitate a massive boxer for months. He grew up without a mother, so he’s never learned his own strength. Like many of our traumatised dogs, he’s turned his anxiety into an oral compulsion. He will chew anything that comes within centimetres of his mouth. He doesn’t mean harm. He’s just too overwhelmed by his feelings to focus on anything but his compulsion. Hurt creatures hurt creatures.

I had terrible epilepsy for most of my life, but nothing has ever been as disabling as my childhood. Like Georgie the boxer, I was never taught healthy self-expression. The only way to survive my youth was to predict my mother’s rage and stem it before it simmered. These days, I still try to predict others’ attacks, even if they’ve never mistreated me before. I’m always on alert, always trying to keep others happy at my own expense because that’s the survival skill I learned growing up.

And if I see signs of an impending attack, I, like George, tend to falter. I was never taught coping skills. I was only taught how to protect myself. The instinct is inherent, even if I’m better at it, now.

There aren’t many cuddlers at the shelter. It requires you to unpick a lot of trauma, and you get hurt. The Cuddle Crew doesn’t mind because we have trauma, too. Sometimes it takes a hurt creature to help another hurt creature.