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There are many ways unresolved trauma can create problems for you and your relationship, especially unresolved childhood trauma (see my article: How Unresolved Trauma Can Affect Your Ability to Be in a Relationship).
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| Unresolved Trauma Can Affect You and Your Relationship |
4 Ways Unresolved Trauma Can Have a Negative Impact on You and Your Relationship
In this article, I'm focusing specifically on the following four problems:
- Developing Rigid Negative Beliefs About Yourself and Relationships
- Choosing an Unhealthy Partner
- Getting Triggered During Conflicts with Your Partner
- Staying in an Unhealthy Relationship Too Long
1. Developing Rigid Negative Beliefs About Yourself and Relationships
Your early childhood experiences have an important impact on your beliefs about yourself and about relationships in general.
If you grew up in a dysfunctional family where life was chaotic and you felt unlovable and emotionally invalidated, you might have formed rigid and negative beliefs about yourself and relationships, including:
- "I don't deserve a loving partner."
- "No one will find me lovable."
- "All men are cheaters."
- "Women can't be trusted."
- "Men only want sex."
And so on.
You might also have a strong fear of rejection and abandonment based on your early experiences. In addition, you might even anticipate rejection and abandonment where these problems doesn't exist.
These rigid negative beliefs make it difficult to trust anyone so even though you might want to have a partner, you might also dread getting into a relationship (see my article: An Emotional Dilemma: Wanting and Dreading Love).
2. Choosing an Unhealthy Partner
If you don't know what a healthy relationship looks like because you grew up in a dysfunctional family, you might not know how to choose someone who is right for you.
Consciously, you might tell yourself you want a relationship that's different from what you experienced growing up, but unconsciously you might gravitate towards partners who feel familiar to you. If what's familiar is dysfunction, that might be what you're drawn to when you're meeting a potential partner.
On an unconscious level, you might also be drawn to people who aren't interested in you because these types of situations activate a familiar longing in you from your childhood (see my article: Letting Go of an Unhealthy Relationship: Unrequited Love).
3. Getting Triggered During Conflicts in Your Relationship
If you have unresolved trauma, you can get easily triggered during an argument with your partner.
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| Unresolved Trauma Can Get Triggered During Arguments |
In the moment, you might not realize that you're stuck in a trauma response because you don't realize your unresolved trauma is getting triggered or, even if you're aware of it, you could find it hard to distinguish between your current emotions from past experiences (see my article: Overcoming Trauma: Learning to Separate Past Traumatic Experiences From Now).
Even if you're in a healthy relationship, your old emotional wounds can get triggered from unresolved trauma. This can create a trauma response including:
- Fight:
- Getting into a confrontation with your partner
- Blaming your partner for your problems,
- Expressing criticism, contempt, defensiveness or stonewalling (see my article: How to Improve Communication in Your Relationship By Eliminating the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse).
- Flight:
- Avoiding problems
- Acting impulsively to ward off unpleasant emotions
- Running away from intimate or emotional situations (see my article: How is Emotional Avoidance Related to Unresolved Trauma?).
- Freeze:
- Feeling helpless or hopeless
- Feeling unable to act
- Disconnecting emotionally from your partner (see my article: Overcoming the Freeze Response Related to Unresolved Trauma).
- Fawn:
- Engaging in people-pleasing behavior with your partner to ward off your unpleasant feelings to the detriment of your emotional needs (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response).
4. Staying in an Unhealthy Relationship Too Long
People who have unresolved trauma often develop an unhealthy tolerance for emotional abuse because it's familiar to them from their childhood and they don't realize they're in an unhealthy relationship (see my article: Should You Stay or Should You Leave Your Relationship?).
Even if you realize you're in an unhealthy relationship, you might feel this is all that you deserve and it's the best you can do because you feel so unworthy. This is related to negative beliefs about yourself mentioned above.
You might also leave an unhealthy relationship, but you enter into a succession of unhealthy relationships after that because you haven't done the necessary psychological work to overcome your history of trauma that creates relationship problems for you.
Getting Help in Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy is different from regular talk therapy.
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| Getting Help in Trauma Therapy |
Regular talk therapy where you talk about your trauma, but you don't actually process the trauma with specific trauma therapy interventions, isn't as effective as Experiential Therapies like EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Somatic Experiencing or AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy).
Instead of struggling on your own, you could benefit from working with a trauma therapist to overcome trauma that keeps you stuck.
A skilled trauma therapist can help you to overcome trauma so you can lead a more fulfilling life (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).
About Me
I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.
As a trauma therapist, I have helped many individual adults and couples to overcome trauma.
To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.
To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.
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