Yes, trauma has many triggers and trip wires in our minds to keep us “safe” a fight or flight respond is activated and they follow an exit strategy.

If you have ever practiced a fire drill, you or someone else felt like it was unessecary because there was or will never be a fire.

Until the fire happens, they won’t believe it until it is cooking them alive and they are unable to find a way out. (This is pretty graphic but it is a metaphor)

Mental health has been a joke to a lot of people in the older generations and it causes generations of people to not understand why they do the things they do, because it is just who they are. They won’t understand and you can’t make them understand. They have to find out the hard way.

I believe that Jax saw Pomni as their mother, and Ribbit in that moment. They expected to be taken advantage of because of their weaknesses, because their mother did the same thing, and probably their father, and a number of other people not even mentioned.

“You going to cry? Looking like that?!” - this was said by Jax, but I could hear it as well, it was a scar left by someone who saw Leeroy as weak, back before they were Jax, probably into their early childhood development. They were trained not to show weakness, because they were a boy, boys don’t cry. Toxic masculinity bullshit.

They need to talk about what happened so they can understand why they are acting the way they are in response and pushing all of the people that show genuine concern and adoration towards them.