An effect of trauma
Stealing or conning people
Taking things that were not yours. Shoplifting, stealing from work, taking from family, running a story on someone for money. Sometimes out of need and sometimes long after the need was over, because it had become how you dealt with things. Growing up without enough, or without anyone you could ask, tends to leave a person with a different relationship to other people property than the one everybody assumes is standard.
There is usually a straight line from going without as a child to how this works in an adult, and knowing that does not settle anything with the people you took from. Both parts get to be true. This is workable, and it tends to shift once the thing underneath it gets named rather than just resolved against.
It can sound like
If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.
Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.
You do not have to carry this alone.
Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.