Why trauma will make you believe you’re in the wrong relationship even when you’re not
By Orit Krug | September 10th, 2021
Are you in the wrong relationship or is unresolved trauma tricking your brain?
Do you constantly switch between wondering if you’re in the wrong relationship, and then being totally head-over-heels for your partner? If so, you probably have old trauma still stored in your body.
One day you’re in love with your partner and fully believe you’ll be together forever.
The next day, you’re overcome with anxiety and thoughts like, “I don’t think I can do this anymore” while planning your secret escape.
This isn’t because you’re in an unhealthy or toxic relationship. In fact, when you objectively think about your relationship, you know it’s the healthiest, most amazing partnership you’ve ever been in.
But, too often, you flip like a switch. If your partner isn’t texting you enough, you no longer feel like your relationship is stable.
If your partner is quiet, you immediately assume that they no longer want to be with you. That’s when you start to create your exit plan so you can leave them FIRST.
This isn’t a reflection of your character. This is TRAUMA controlling your ability to feel calm and safe in a healthy relationship.
To cope, your mind makes up stories that you’re in the wrong relationship. Because that’s safer than totally letting your guard down and letting yourself be fully loved.
Should you trust the voices that say you’re in the wrong relationship?
Whether it’s the voices in your own head, or your friends (aka, unqualified “therapists”), you may want to pause before you believe them.
My client Corrie used to have thoughts of leaving her husband every single day. She had been through decades of talk therapy and alternative approaches trying to resolve this.
She consistently came home from work and flipped out at her husband and daughter. Her baselines was snappy and frustrated. And she blamed this on the relationship.
She felt intense urges to run away, which was her Flight response hijacking her body and emotions. The threat of being in her relationship felt so real, like stumbling upon a bear in the wild. She truly felt she needed to escape. Fast.
While she spent all those years feeling like damaged goods, she didn’t realize how much her nervous system controlled & intensified her fear of being in her marriage.
But once we helped her release her trauma through her BODY, she said all of her relationship doubts & anxiety dissipated. She finally felt calm and rooted, not only in her relationship, but inside her skin as well.
Corrie went from thinking she was in the wrong relationship DAILY to becoming so much closer with her husband and daughter.
For the first time, she enjoyed her life with them and even felt excited about their future together.
If Corrie trusted those voices in her head, and followed primal urges in her body to leave, she would’ve broken apart her family. All based on false beliefs due to old trauma making her feel that NO relationship is safe.
How do you know if it’s trauma tricking you into believing you’re in the wrong relationship?
There are several ways you can tell this is old trauma running the show:
- You have a strong track record of Relationship Anxiety, where you constantly fear that your partner isn’t right for you. No matter how many relationships you leave, you always feel the same doubts & fears in the next one.
- Your partner is emotionally stable, but you cycle between being high & in love with your partner to low & hopeless about your future together.
- The tiniest “signs” set you off. For example, your partner’s tone was “slightly different” when answering your question about where they went after work. Or, they didn’t answer their phone at the grocery store because it was on “Do Not Disturb.”
- There has been absolutely NO evidence that your partner is disloyal or doesn’t love you, but you cannot trust them no matter what they say or do.
Once you experience trauma, your nervous system becomes wired to look for danger signs even when there are none. That’s because its #1 mission is to keep you from getting hurt like you did in the past.
It’s like an animal in the wild who senses every vibration and smell to make sure they won’t get eaten alive by a predator.
You sense your partner’s TINIEST mistakes or things they said “wrong” as the biggest betrayals. When in reality, there is no perfect relationship and you are each bound to mess up every now and then.
Even if there are TRULY questionable things that your partner has done, you won’t know for sure if you’re in the wrong relationship until you heal your trauma.
Unresolved trauma creates so much confusion because you’re wired to automatically react to protect your life, even when you rationally know that you are safe.
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.
