Introduction: Adaptation to Trauma

We adapt to life. Experience spurs emotions to motivate. Pleasant emotions attract; negative emotions repel. Future encounters use memories to analyze the present. If a man acted violent yesterday, his presence makes us nervous today. But associations spill-over affecting more than connected elements.

​The location of a past mishap, although now safe, may feel threatening, stirring unnecessary fear. Similar movements, hand gestures, or words may startle, reminding of a frightful day. New encounters are constantly and unconsciously compared to the past. The organism continually asks the ultimate question:  Am I safe?

See Emotional Safety for more on this topic

Wounds From Relationship Trauma

Relationship trauma digs deep, leaving wounds that last. We all encounter mean people that cruelly attempt to harm. Relationship trauma is dealt from the hands of those we trust.

Susan Johnson wrote:

“I’ve discovered that certain incidents do more than just touch our raw spots or hurt our feelings. They injure us so deeply that they overturn our world. They are relationship traumas. Indeed, there is no greater trauma than to be wounded by the very people we count on to support and protect us” (Johnson, 2008).

Nothing wounds as deep as the slaps and slanders coming from those we expect to protect. Our secure base is a chamber of sorrow. Instead of acceptance, we are invalidated. These wounds live on fear attaches to our experiences of love, haunting future relationships with the relationship trauma from the past.

Impact of Relationship Trauma on Future Relationships

Relationship trauma can significantly impact future relationships in various ways:

• Trust Issues: Trauma can lead to difficulties in trusting new partners and may cause wariness in forming close bonds.
• Negative Patterns: Individuals with unresolved trauma may subconsciously attract or be drawn to partners who reinforce their unhealed wounds, potentially leading to a cycle of negative relationships.
• Emotional Reactivity: Trauma can cause heightened emotional responses to triggers, which can lead to overreactions during conflicts or misunderstandings in relationships.
• Fear of Intimacy: Past trauma can make individuals fear intimacy due to the vulnerability it requires, leading to avoidance of deep connections.
• Expectations of Betrayal: Having experienced betrayal in the past, trauma survivors may expect similar experiences in new relationships, making it difficult to feel secure.
• Communication Challenges: Trauma can affect communication, making it hard to express needs and feelings effectively, which is crucial for healthy relationships.
• Self-Worth Issues: Trauma can impact self-esteem, leading individuals to believe they are unworthy of a healthy relationship, which may cause them to settle for less than they deserve.

Addressing these issues often requires professional help, such as therapy, to process the trauma and learn healthier relationship patterns.

Predictions of Danger are Subjective

Our ability to predict danger isn’t perfect. We routinely judge based on false pretenses from the past—ill-suited for the present. A painful childhood attachment may project danger on all future attachments. New attachments are painful when childhood attachment programming was chaotic, past pain spilling into the present, frightened when no threats exist. In Attachment theory, we refer to these as internal working models.

New attachments strike fear and leave us screaming for escape—the past relationship trauma influencing the present. These intricate pairings of past and present occurs beneath consciousness and are stubbornly resistant to reason.

​The trauma orchestrates feelings easily triggered in the present. Successfully navigating personal constellations of hurts requires new cognitive strategies, some therapy, and a host of supporting others. With experience, we recognize the past interfering, manipulating the emotions. disrupting peace and misguiding choices.

​Empowered by wisdom we are strengthened to better manage behaviors, and act in healthier ways. But we may need a little more. Once the symptoms are identified, the underlying beliefs creating the disruptions must be confronted and unlearned.

Some Strategies Effective During Childhood Trauma May Limit Adult Intimacy

The old cognitive strategies providing stability in chaotic childhoods interfere with adult intimacy; adaptive for the child but maladaptive for the adult. Abuse and neglected children rely on a variety of adaptive survival styles (Heller & LaPierre, 2012).

The broken soul inappropriately clings or emotionally disconnects; fearing abandonment or recklessly fighting attachment. These destructive drives twist and pull on relationships, requiring emotional understanding in partners to work through the burdensome demands. But coming from a chaotic past, our demands often seem appropriate—natural responses to feelings disrupting inner-peace. Instead of correctly identifying flawed internal mechanisms, we self-righteously project blame on to partners for triggering an unjustified storm. No changes can occur without recognition of these flawed emotional learnings.

See Adaptive Survival Styles for more on this topic

New Relationships and Momentary Bliss

New relationships temporarily disguise these maladjusted reactions. We overlook external triggers blinded by the natural haze of new love. The new partner is perfect—and they may also see us as perfect. The temporary escape proves or misguided blames of outside forces—not personal maladjustment. Emerging from a recent painful relationship, we idolize the new love object. Our interpretations are distorted. We interpret a new partner’s poor behaviors as positive. New relationships feel good and we feel good—in love, and when in bliss, the whole world is great.

The blissfulness ends and reality returns. The past relationship trauma still etched in our hearts resurfaces—emotions and all.

Eventually, past cognitive programs re-emerge; insecurities strengthen and disrupt. Partner behaviors kindly interpreted during bliss now appear sinister from the darkness of our insecurity. Pain from the past inserts itself into every relationship; we revert to the same protective cognitive strategies. These critical junctures determine the relationship’s direction –flourishing growth or damning pain. Following the same chaotic feeling states, we doom relationships with familiar heartaches.

All Relationships Create Some Vulnerability 

All relationships have a possibility of failure, no matter how skilled the partners. Attraction doesn’t guarantee intimacy. The more eccentric our traits, the more difficult it is to find a compatible partner. Compatibility takes weeks or months to discern. When childhood attachments were anxious or chaotic, patiently working through the exploratory phase can be hell, creating unhealthy dependence on potential partners before the relationship naturally develops or fearfully maintaining space when closeness is needed.

The chaotic attachments of childhood leave us unfamiliar with connection, missing opportunity, fearing healthy closeness and over-looking warnings of danger. A history of disorganized attachments creates anxiousness with new opportunity; because we can’t predict or properly interpret the flow of information. Am I safe? I don’t know. 

​Childhood relationship traumas dumbfound the adult when confronted with the confusing maze to connect. Even when confident in other areas, our relationships expose insecurity. A child born into darkness and hidden from light during the first few years of life will be blind. The missing sight stimulation in early development subjects sight modules of the brain to the pruning process, where synaptic connections, unneeded in the dark are eliminated. Likewise, a child neglected and abused during primary attachment stages also suffers significant loss of healthy synaptic connections, essential for adult relationships.

Intimacy Still Possible

Intimacy is not beyond our abilities. We may travel unconventional paths, facing experience differently than a child raised in loving and healthy environments; but we still can enjoy healthy attachments. We may need to recruit other areas to assist in connecting, seeking out those who will patiently work and grow with us. They may guide during the light; but we can guide during the dark.

Healthy and unhealthy relationships provide opportunities to learn. Our social encounters unveil faulty programming only available through honest examination. Raw emotions offer lessons. With help, we recognize the emotions, soothe them, and then practice healthier responses, abandoning the sharp retorts of the past. Knowing our pain, we can soothe with less defensiveness. Anxiousness will still exist, but we can prevail. Enjoyable connections maybe uncharted territory. Closeness will still strike tender wounds, spiking fears. Even for the healthy, relationships magnify emotions; but for those with disrupted childhoods, relationships ignite panic—intimacy, at first, may be limited but possible.

See Wounds that Refuse to Heal for more on this topic

Healing from Relationship Trauma

Healing from relationship trauma is a process that often involves several steps, and it can be different for everyone. Here are some general strategies that may help:

• Establish Safety: Create an environment that feels emotionally and physically safe for you.
• Set Boundaries: Identify and establish boundaries that protect your well-being and allow for healthy interactions with others.
• Build a Support System: Connect with trusted friends, family members, or support groups who can provide understanding and encouragement.
• Seek Professional Help: Consider therapy with a mental health professional experienced in dealing with relationship trauma.
• Practice Self-Care: Engage in activities that promote relaxation and joy, such as exercise, hobbies, or meditation.
• Educate Yourself: Learn about relationship trauma and its effects to better understand your experiences and reactions.
• Process Your Emotions: Allow yourself to feel and express your emotions, whether through therapy, journaling, or art.
• Reconnect with Yourself: Rediscover your interests, values, and goals to rebuild your sense of self.
• Grieve and Mourn: Give yourself permission to grieve the loss and pain associated with the trauma.
• Gradual Exposure: Slowly expose yourself to situations that may have become fearful, but do so at a pace that feels manageable.

Remember, healing takes time, and it’s okay to move at your own pace. Be patient and compassionate with yourself as you navigate this journey.

Associated Concepts

• Parataxic Distortion: This is a term coined by psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. It describes the tendency to perceive others based on past experiences and unconscious biases, rather than on their actual present behavior.
• Attachment Theory: This theory explores how human beings form emotional bonds and connections with others, particularly in early childhood.
• Fear of Engulfment: This refers to a dynamic in relationships where one individual feels overwhelmed or suffocated by the other’s excessive attention, control, or dependency. This can lead to a loss of personal identity and autonomy, as the individual feels consumed by the relationship.
• Love and Fear: This refers to the opposing emotions experienced by high relationship anxiety during attachment processes. When someone suffering from anxious attachment falls in love, it is also accompanied by intense fear of losing that love.
• Internal Working Models: Bowlby’s concept of internal working models describes how children form mental representations of their attachment relationships, which then guide future social interactions.
• Adverse Childhood Experiences: These refer to potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood (0-17 years). These experiences can include various forms of abuse, neglect, witnessing violence, and growing up in a household with mental health or substance use problems.
• Risk Regulation Model: This model proposes individuals have an internal regulation systems that individuals use to navigate the intense conflicting demands between self-protecting security and desires for security and belonging.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

We still have a chance. We are endowed with something that transcends the firing and wiring of neurons. Accordingly, we can learn, we can change the trajectory of our lives. Instead of responding from our past relationship trauma, we can respond with hopes of a better future. Once the discomforting emotions emerge, we can recognize them and their origin. Instead of attacking a partner in anger, we can share and connect.

​By addressing each partner’s negative emotions (Dyadic Regulation), the triggering episodes of feeling don’t destroy. We learn our perceived threats are false. Now facing discomforts can be combated; and by working through them with a loving partner creates safety. The feelings of safety establish a foundation for trust; and from trust, intimacy. The past no longer destroys the present. The present now defines the future.