Ghosts from the past can be unwelcome intruders in your relationship
Are you or your partner experiencing symptoms in your relationship that could be related to a history of trauma? A common exchange between a trauma survivor and their partner might sound like this:
Pat: What? Are you serious? I just came up and gave you a love squeeze. Why are you freaking out so much? You’re impossible. I don’t want to be with someone who is so cold and frigid. Ice queen… that is who you are.
Trauma is an unwelcome intrusion, one that often affects a person’s present-day relationship in significant ways. Watch for specific symptoms: intrusive memories, anxiety responses, emotional numbness, or sudden mood shifts.
How This Plays Out in Relationships
When a trauma survivor is able to turn to their partner or spouse and ask to be held and comforted during a flashback, rather that to detach or hurt themselves, a new trust and sense of hope can emerge for the survivor.
Traumas involving key caregivers are “violations of human connection” (Herman, 1992). More than anyone else, your partner has the ability to help you heal from past relationship traumas. A partner or spouse can have the most effective healing power over past traumas for the person who has experienced past relationship betrayals and abuse. Partners or spouses can become healers.
A safe, secure relationship supports immune function and physical health. In a distressed relationship, both partners in the couple likely experience more depression and anxiety symptoms. A distressed relationship reduces your sense of community, leaving your body without its natural support.
In a secure connection, facing fears becomes possible and resilience increases. If you feel isolated and alienated from the larger world, you are much more vulnerable to outside dangers.
How This Plays Out in Relationships
When you or your partner have experienced physical or emotional harm, the relationship carries that weight. Re-experiencing physical sensations can be effectively treated through exposure therapy, known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Relationship symptoms rarely respond to CBT alone. Attachment-focused work tends to be far more effective. A partner lies next to the trauma survivor in the night, present for the moments no therapist sees. If a partner or spouse doesn’t know how to respond in key moments when threat is perceived, they may become part of the problem instead of offering key elements of healing.
At the Loving at Your Best Plan, the therapist works to address the symptoms of the trauma, and much more. A focus is to help create a safe and secure emotional bond between the couple in the relationship, a connection that promotes safety and calms danger and threat. A history of trauma intensifies the need for a safe connection, and trust is the basis for a secure relationship.
How This Plays Out in Relationships
Relationships where one or both partners have trauma in their histories are more likely to have intense negative patterns of interacting with each other, and without an effective intervention, these patterns can kill the relationship. Therapists at the Loving at Your Best Plan integrate top-rated interventions for couples with difficult and challenging histories, especially trauma. These therapies include schema therapy, emotionally focused therapy, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Gottman Method Couples Therapy.
Do you or the person that you love have a history that includes trauma on an emotional, physical, or sexual level? If so, have you found ways to effectively navigate the symptoms in your relationship in NYC? Share your thoughts.
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The Loving at Your Best Plan: It’s How You Love That Counts
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Travis Atkinson, LCSW, specializes in evidence-based couples therapy including the Gottman Method, EFT, and Schema Therapy, for couples in NYC and online. Take the first step today.
