Breaking Strange Covenants
Many people who have endured trauma, especially complex childhood trauma, carry unseen covenants that shape their lives in repeated patterns. I have spent decades bound to a covenant I did not choose: that scarcity, fear, and smallness were my lot; that beauty, creativity, and freedom were dangerous; and that I would never amount to much. This covenant shaped my nervous system, my choices, and even my relationship with the world.
“Strange covenants” refers to unusual, often unspoken agreements or bindings that aren’t straightforward or healthy.
A covenant is a binding agreement, promise, or contract. Traditionally, it implies something serious, enduring, even sacred. When it’s described as strange, it points to something distorted, unconscious, or formed under conditions that weren’t freely chosen.
So when we talk about strange covenants, we’re often talking about the quiet agreements people make with themselves or others in order to survive. Things like believing that staying quiet will keep you safe, or that enduring pain will eventually earn love. These agreements can form through trauma-bonded relationships, where attachment is shaped by fear, dependency, or imbalance rather than genuine choice. They can also come from inherited or imposed loyalties to family systems, beliefs, or roles that were never consciously agreed to. Sometimes they live internally as rules we never knowingly signed up for, such as self-punishment, over-responsibility, or silence in the face of harm.
In psychological or symbolic language, strange covenants are bindings that once helped you survive, but now restrict your life.
Covenant: “Scarcity, fear, and smallness are my lot; I will never amount to much.”
Repetition compulsion: Every time you unconsciously make choices that keep you limited, avoid claiming your power, or fear your creativity, you’re replaying the covenant.
Many survivors carry these covenants with silence, endurance, self-blame, over-functioning, or fear around relationships, money and safety. These are not moral failures. They are survival agreements made by a nervous system under threat.
When people talk about breaking strange covenants, they’re usually referring to becoming aware of them, releasing the obligation to uphold them, and choosing new agreements rooted in safety, dignity, and self-respect rather than fear.
Artist: Christiiana Morgan 1897-1967
“The Staff Pierced the Breast of a Woman Who Laid Crucified on the ground”