How past trauma makes people sabotage their perfect relationship
By Orit Krug | July 3rd, 2020
Many people sabotage the relationship with their healthy partners because of trauma trapped in their bodies.
Here are the 3 most common signs that your past trauma is making you sabotage your “perfect” relationship today.
1. The past trauma comes rushing back at the first sign of conflict
When you have unresolved trauma from past relationships, your nervous system will automatically react in fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown at the first sign of conflict.
Even though you’re in a healthy, loving relationship, it feels like the past trauma from your childhood or ex-partner is going to happen all over again. This is out of your control, because your brain and body register the threat in under a second and before you know it, you’re in survival-defend-attack mode.
Your mind knows that your partner is nothing like the ones from the past, but your primal body doesn’t know it yet. Instead of being able to stay present in the conversation and become closer by getting through the conflict together, you fight back, leave the room, become silent, or you completely shut them out.
This is NOT your fault. Your body is wired to react this way right now because of past trauma, and it makes you sabotage your relationship by creating massive blowouts or avoiding conflict altogether.
2. Love doesn’t feel quite right without all the drama.
Whether you’ve experienced trauma in your childhood or past romantic relationships, your experience of love has been all drama, trauma, and maybe even violence.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but your nervous system and body feels much safer and more “loved” in a tumultuous relationship. So now that you’re in a calm relationship, there’s something missing. Or maybe it feels like they don’t really love you because there’s no grand dramatic gestures (I’m sorry, I love you, here’s a puppy!).
Your partner shows you they care and love you, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Even when your partner gets mad, they’re pretty chill about it, and it’s like, “Why don’t they CARE?” Because you’re used to your ex-partner yelling and flipping out, and that’s the only way you knew they cared.
When your nervous system is adapted to drama and trauma, it feels very uncomfortable and unsettling in your body. It makes you want to create the drama to fill that void, or you’re just waiting for the sh*t to hit the fan instead of being present and enjoying your healthy relationship.
3. You need constant reassurance.
Your past trauma is NOT your fault, but deep down your body believes that you deserved all that hurt and abandonment. That’s why you never feel quite good enough for your partner or worthy of their love.
No matter how much your partner shows you love, it’s too hard to believe that it’s true. You need them to keep proving it to you, and even then you still can’t accept it.
It creates doubt and constant worry that they’re eventually going to realize how “flawed” you are and end up leaving (which ironically pushes them away to the point of wanting to leave).
As you question their every act of love, you reject them and show them that what THEY’RE doing isn’t good enough. They feel like they’ll never be able to satisfy you and eventually start building their own walls of self-protection and resentment. The kind that breaks apart many relationships.
You are capable of experiencing healthy, lasting love even if you experienced trauma in the past.
The good news is that you’re not “damaged goods” forever because you experienced trauma. It’s only damaging your relationship today because you still haven’t fully released it from your body.
No matter how many years you’ve been in talk therapy or tried to convince your mind “I’m safe, I’m safe!” – your body is still holding onto the old story that all relationships end in hurt.
In order to break these old patterns for good, your trauma must be accessed and healed at the level of your nervous system AND body.
That way, you can let go of the old fear and negative relationship patterns and rewire your system for love and connection.
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.
