“Am I asking for too much?” and 5 more questions that indicate past trauma is making you sabotage your relationship today

By Orit Krug  |  December 22nd, 2020

It’s normal to doubt yourself in your relationship sometimes, but if you’re repeatedly asking yourself the following 6 questions, it’s likely that your past trauma is causing you to question your worthiness and potentially sabotage your relationship.

Let’s jump in:

1. Am I asking for too much?

Your love is happy to give you what you need but sometimes when they’re stressed or exhausted, they say “Not now,” or, “Can you just do it?”

This triggers an intense feeling of abandonment and betrayal within you. Even though they are there for you 90% of the time, these occasional incidents make you feel like no one loves or cares about you.

It makes you question why you’re even with your partner if they can’t be there for you or can’t do you a favor (even though you know this isn’t true).

Once you calm down and reflect on what just happened, you realize that you completely blew things out of proportion. Yet, you still wonder, “Am I asking too much?”

You probably aren’t asking too much, but past trauma has a pervasive way of making us constantly overreact, doubt ourselves, and shut down from the people who love us the most.

Hence, the next question…

2. Am I overreacting?

If you have old trauma stored inside your body, then you probably overreact more often than you’d like.

This is NOT your fault.

When you experience past trauma, your nervous system becomes hardwired to impulsively react in a fight, flight, or freeze response whenever you experience the faintest reminder of your past trauma.

For example, your partner hugs you from behind and suddenly you freak out and push them away before even realizing what just happened. The way they snuck up on you automatically triggers a memory of your unpredictable abusive father instead of being able to appreciate a sweet, loving gesture.

You actually want this healthy affection all the time, but these acts of intimacy scares the crap out of you, especially when it comes by surprise. Instead of being free-spirited, fun and spontaneous in your relationship, you’re usually on guard and in need of control.

Another example is that if you keep raging at your partner whenever you see a text from a number you don’t know and automatically assume they’re cheating, then yes you’re overreacting. However, this is NOT a reflection of who you are as a person. It is your trauma controlling your emotions and behaviors.

These impulsive reactions are primal and occur in the non-verbal part of your brain – where your trauma is also stored. There is no amount of trying to talk or think your way out of behaving differently until you release trauma from your body.

3. Do they really mean it when they say ‘I love you?’

When you’re still holding on to the trauma of being abandoned and rejected in past childhood or romantic relationships, you’ll automatically assume you’re not worthy of love in your relationship today.

Your partner could tell you “I love you” EVERY DAMN DAY and you still won’t believe it until you heal the trauma of past heartaches.

Even if you affirm in your mind that they DO love you, those 3 words still won’t click with you when your partner says them. Instead, you may remain numb. Trauma has made you so disconnected from your body that you can’t feel your heart even though there’s so much healthy love right in front of you.

My client Zoe had an amazing breakthrough with this when we worked together. She always thought she took in her husband’s love, but it wasn’t until she released the trauma from her body and started feeling safe to FEEL (instead of cut-off from her body by being obsessively in her thoughts) that she realized how much love she was truly missing from him.

She couldn’t believe how much love she had been blocking before she could really feel the difference in her body.

Your mind has to believe it, but your body also has to FEEL it.

4. Do they think about other women, men, etc?

Yes. They probably casually think about others and that’s totally normal. Your partner can be in a monogamous, committed and loyal relationship with you AND still think about others.

YOU are the person they have dedicated their life to and the most important one in their world.

When you are confident in yourself and truly know how amazing you are, it doesn’t matter that they have perfectly normal and healthy thoughts about others.

It no longer feels threatening that they think about other people because you trust and know that they won’t randomly abandon the amazing human that you are.

5. Do they miss me when I’m out?

I used to think that Aaron would discover how much better life was without me when he went out with his friends. I had nightmares of him coming home to say he was bored and done with our relationship. This was a complete lack of confidence in myself and my trauma-rooted belief that I was unworthy of his love.

Once I healed my trauma and believed that I was worthy, I no longer went batsh*t crazy when he went out. My anxiety stopped and I was able to wish him the best time without secretly wishing he would be miserable without me.

I now believe that wherever he is, near or far, he thinks that he is the luckiest guy to be spending his life with me and that he cannot wait to come home and hug me. What a huge shift!

6. Do they even care that I’m upset?

OF COURSE. Your partner is with you because they care deeply about you.

Maybe you’ve rejected their acts of love and how much they care about you SO many times that they’re afraid to try showing you again.

Or maybe you’ve been too scared to express your true emotions, so they honestly don’t know HOW you want them to show you how much they care.

My former client Jessica froze up every time she wanted to express frustration. She was so afraid her husband would react in anger the way her abusive father used to, even though her husband never did. Her old trauma made her quiet her voice and hide her needs until she released the trauma from her body.

Once Jessica finally started speaking her truth, her husband became much more clear about what she wanted and how to give that to her – both emotionally and physically. Now she is 100% unapologetically honest and it has reignited the amazing spark they had before having kids.

You deserve to find peace in your body & let love in without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.