5 ways trauma gets triggered in polyamory and how to resolve it
By Orit Krug | May 25th, 2023
Polyamory can perpetuate trauma patterns from our past, but it can also help us break them for good.
If you’ve experienced past trauma, you might be wondering if polyamory is the right choice for you. You might worry that dating multiple people will be too triggering. Maybe you’ve already seen your partner fall in love with someone else and it’s stirred up unresolved heartbreak from the past.
Whether polyamory is potentially healing or damaging for you depends on what steps you take once you’re confronted with unresolved trauma. Whether it’s a new relationship structure, a breakup, or something else, polyamory is bound to trigger past traumas that are still unresolved.
Let’s talk about how to identify if your poly life is surfacing old or new trauma, and how you can use these triggers as opportunities to evolve even more into the best version of yourself.
5 signs that polyamory is triggering trauma
Please read this with as little judgment as possible. These are not meant to shame or blame anyone. These are intended to build awareness and understanding of yourself, so that you can take the next steps to shift them whenever you are ready.
1. You have so much anxiety that you can’t relax or sleep.
Anxiety in polyamory is normal. Insecurities will inevitably come up through new relationship structures. However, if you’re experiencing so much anxiety that you’re losing sleep or unable to complete everyday tasks, then this is a sure sign of past trauma acting up.
Many people with this level of anxiety experience obsessive thoughts about a current situation, like their partner going on a date with someone else. But in reality, this anxiety is so strong because the situation they’re worried about is stirring up even more anxiety from subconscious past traumas.
The anxiety isn’t just about “What if my partner falls in love with someone else?” or “What if my partner leaves me?” This full-blown anxiety is your body remembering all the other times you’ve been heartbroken, abandoned, and rejected. Even when you tell your mind that your partner isn’t cheating, or this is part of your agreement and there’s “nothing to worry about” – your body doesn’t believe it’s true.
When you try to convince yourself to remain calm, you’re only speaking to your Prefrontal Cortex, the part of the brain that governs logic and verbal language; however, it is your Amygdala, the fear center of the brain and body, that’s overreacting and telling your entire system that this situation is not safe. This is like speaking Spanish to someone who only understands English. You cannot successfully convince your Prefrontal Cortex that your Amygdala shouldn’t be filled with fear.
Your mind can say a thousand times over, “It’s safe; I’m calm; My partner won’t leave,” but your body will still feel highly on edge, uneasy, and desperate to find calm again. While this anxiety can feel so unbearable that you never want to feel it again, try to hear it as a call from your body saying, “Hey, there’s some deep unresolved stuff here. Let’s listen and finally work through it.”
2. Your shadow side comes out in new relationships.
This often happens when you’ve been with a primary partner for a long time, and then you begin dating outside your relationship. Perhaps in your long term relationship (LTR), you’re securely attached, openly communicative, and emotionally vulnerable.
However, when dating someone new for the first time in years, you may unexpectedly witness your “shadow self” coming out. Instead of being a “good partner,” you are insecure, closed, or avoidant.
I experienced my shadow side in my first poly relationship. Up until then, I felt secure, confident, and unconditionally loving with my husband of almost a decade. But in my first poly fling, I experienced so much anxiety about my new love leaving me. I constantly pushed him away. I was stunned by my behaviors, I almost didn’t recognize myself.
About a year later, I started seeing someone else, where the same thing happened, but I was on the other side of it. It was his first poly relationship outside of his LTR. With his primary partner, I could see that he was kind, loving, and vulnerable. With me, he became guarded, avoidant, and pushed me away as we became closer. I immediately recognized that it was HIS shadow side coming out in our relationship.
Our shadow sides are gifts that show us what is still unhealed inside. When this happens for you, you’re presented with an opportunity to heal even more deeply than before.
3. You experience bouts of rage with jealousy.
Jealousy is another normal experience in polyamory. It’s inevitable, no matter how secure you are. Even if you’ve “mastered” compersion, you will still get jealous every now and then. Jealousy itself is NOT an indicator of past trauma. It’s how you respond to the jealousy that reveals if you’re still holding unresolved trauma in your body.
If you react to jealousy with rage, like sending angry texts, calling your partner(s) 7 times in a row, yelling, cursing, gaslighting, or any other toxic behavior, then it’s clear that old trauma has hijacked your nervous system into a Fight response. In fact, any reaction to jealousy that is met with a survival response is an indicator of unresolved trauma. You may Flight (impulsively drive away or leave the relationship), Freeze (isolate, ignore, avoid) or Fawn (abandon all your needs to please your partner).
While it’s normal to feel scared, worried, or insecure in polyamory, it’s crucial to have a sense of command over your body’s responses to these feelings. If you’re impulsively reacting and later regretting what you did or said, that’s a classic trauma pattern. If you’re upset but still able to breathe, regulate, and speak up clearly, then that’s a healthy pattern in response to an uncomfortable emotion or experience.
4. You chase the NRE high but then run as soon as things get real.
This is a classic trauma pattern of intimacy avoidance. The beginning stages of NRE, or New Relationship Energy, are intoxicating, surreal, and possibly even better than some of the most desirable drugs out there. You have no problem indulging in this honeymoon phase, but as soon as things get real, you’re onto the next one.
Perhaps, in the midst of your drugged-up lovey feelings, your new partner gets upset with you or confronts you about an issue. You may feel angry, anxious, and/or avoidant about this. Instead of being able to talk through it, reassure your partner, or gently express your own discomfort, you find it easier to escape the relationship. You might even blame them for things going wrong and leaving, instead of owning up to your own fears.
Old trauma has made you so fearful of emotional intimacy and conflict, that you avoid it like the plague. It’s understandable why trauma can make us act this way, but please – don’t blame or gaslight your partners who never intended to hurt you. That’s not cool.
This pattern may be the only one you know, but it is not a reflection of WHO you are. Your nervous system does not currently feel safe with conflict or intimacy, but it’s completely possible to rewire it to feel safe enough and reap the benefits of relationships beyond the NRE phase.
5. You constantly change agreements and boundaries.
It’s a normal part of the process to shift agreements and boundaries based on our ever-evolving comfort levels. However, if you find that you’re constantly reacting to situations by asking or threatening to change a mutually agreed upon agreement, then this is a trauma-driven behavior.
Let’s say that you and your partner agree to have sleepovers at each of your other partner’s places. When your partner has their first sleepover, you have so much anxiety about it that you take away permission for your partner to do this again.
If that’s an occasional occurrence, that’s fine. Sometimes we don’t know we’re so uncomfortable with something until we try it, and then we have to scale back. But if this sequence of events happens so often that you’re constantly backing out of agreements, or reacting with even more rigid boundaries, then you’re behaving in response to the trauma that “tells you” it’s not safe to feel your emotions.
Impulsively putting up boundaries and changing agreements is a way to avoid feeling your feelings. It’s also a way to feel control in a situation where you may feel threatened that something bad will happen to you. This is trauma-related, because your nervous system and body remember from the past that emotions are not safe to feel or express. You may have gotten punished for your feelings in your childhood, or you had an abuser who studied your feelings (i.e., what makes you vulnerable) and used them to hurt you.
Individuals with a healthy, regulated nervous system are able to feel the sensations that come with all feelings instead of avoiding them and unfairly hurting others in the process.
How trauma in polyamory can lead to immense personal growth
It’s common for us to see old trauma rear its ugly head and immediately try to push it back down. Research shows that the Hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for distinguishing past from present, is smaller in volume in trauma survivors. This means that when we are triggered by something that happened 20 years ago, it can often feel like it’s happening all over again today. It makes sense why we’d instinctually want to avoid feeling that pain again.
Your nervous system did what it knew best all those years ago. Your body worked in automatic gear to protect yourself from such horrible feelings. But now, it’s important to recognize that your triggers today are merely reminders of unresolved trauma from the past. Unless you are currently in an abusive or toxic situation, you do not actually need to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn to save your life.
Instead, you have a choice to stay present with the fear coming up in your body and relationship. You can show your body and your partner that you know a healthier way to respond.
But first, you have to be able to identify the fear coming up in your body before you react.
Try this for the next minute:
1. Close your eyes and allow your body to come into a position that feels supportive for you right now.
2. Imagine or visualize a scenario where you’ve been triggered in polyamory.
3. Notice immediately the strongest sensation that comes up in your body.
Don’t try to fix, push away, or release that sensation. Instead, allow your body to naturally respond and move to that sensation (i.e., if your shoulders tensed up, what do your shoulders naturally want to do? Do they want to roll forward or shake? Do you organically find your hands massaging your shoulders?)
This exercise is an example of how you can let your body be present with fear or discomfort and move through it, instead of fear controlling you. When you become familiar with how fear, anger, jealousy, and discomfort feel in your body, and start to experience being in command of responding to those sensations, they no longer feel so scary that you have to avoid them. Once you stop the pattern of avoiding your feelings, you’ll break the pattern of avoiding or sabotaging relationships.
Join our somatic retreat for polyamorous folks navigating trauma
The latest trauma research consistently shows that trauma gets stored in the non-verbal parts of our brain and body. If you’ve been in therapy or seeking support for a while, but you still feel that trauma is hijacking your nervous system & body’s responses, this is NOT your fault. A somatic, embodied approach is necessary to process & release trauma. Talking can only get us so far.
I am co-facilitating a Poly Retreat with Dedeker Winston (co-host of Multiamory Podcast), where we will be using somatic therapy practices to help you integrate and embody the ability to deeply love yourself and your partners through your poly journey. Our neuroscience-backed practices are effective in processing traumas, working through current non-monogamy challenges, and deeply celebrating your incredible & courageous journey of practicing open love!
Click here to learn more about our next Poly Somatic Healing Retreat!
