Trauma occurs when a someone has some sort of encounter to danger, physical violence, isolation, or sexual abuse. Approximately 70% of adults in the United States experience some sort of traumatic event at least once in their lifetime.
The experience of trauma refers not necessarily to the event itself, but the way that event is processed in the brain and nervous system. Trauma responses are often developed in high intensity situations where someone is left alone to deal with the aftermath.
Navigating relationships with a partner who has a history of trauma can be confusing. Triggers may pop up in unexpected places, leaving you feeling lost in how to support your partner while making sure you are treated respectfully.
However, relationships are also a huge potential source of healing for someone who has experienced trauma. Working through a traumatic event can heal both partners and the relational system. The work can decrease individual symptoms of stress and anxiety and strengthen the secure attachment bond between partners.
The process of healing through trauma, and supporting someone you love heal through trauma, is not intuitive and takes intention, time, and patience. In this post, we are sharing practical and effective strategies on how to help your partner heal from trauma. You can use these tips on your own or with a therapist in couples counseling.
Stages Of Healing From Trauma
The central nervous system serves the body and brain as an information response system. When someone experiences trauma, their sympathetic nervous system can get activated in order to move their body into action to find safety. This real-time response can include:
- Release of stress hormones (cortisol + adrenaline)
- Increased heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration
- Stress and hyper-arousal
The response system is a survival mechanism designed to move us into fight or flight in response to danger.
Yet, the complication occurs once the real-world danger has passed, and the nervous system does not realized the body is no longer in danger. As a result, it does not complete the stress response cycle and becomes easily activated into stress responses.
This can lead to the nervous system continuing to work on overdrive and symptoms over time such as:
- Anxiety
- Irritability
- Hyper vigilance (I.e. scanning the environment)
- Sleep difficulty
To heal from trauma and move out of these nervous system responses, an individual generally moves through a framework of stages. Note that these stages and the healing methods can vary based on circumstances and trauma recovery approach.
Safety and Stabilization
First, create a safe space. The stabilization phase helps and individual learn grounding techniques and coping skills. These skills serve as resources to keep the nervous system active in the present moment, where trauma responses are often loops stuck in a past point of extreme stress.
Coping and grounding skills guide clients to regulate strong emotions and return to states of safety. These skills are essential prior to reviewing traumatic memories to avoid re-traumatizing the system.
Reprocessing
Trauma reprocessing typically involves revisiting traumatic memories in a safe and structured environment of therapy. Models that reprocess trauma include EFIT, EMDR, and IFS.
The goal of this stage is to reopen the memory with the individual grounded in the present. Then, they desensitize the memory to complete the trauma response loop.
By completing this reprocessing stage, individuals can release stuck emotion and modify negative thoughts that formed as a result of the trauma.
Integration and Growth
The integration and growth phases focus on meaning-making of the experience. Rather than identifying with the trauma, individuals learn to integrate this experience as simply one part of their story and leave it in the past.
Integration allows for a realignment with personal values and a new relationship with self and others. Traumatic experiences often create shame. Yet, once they are reprocessed and integrated, individuals can move toward self-trust and self-compassion.
How to Help Your Partner Heal From Trauma
These stress responses of a traumatic experience alter someone on an individual psychological level. Plus, they have huge impacts on close relationships.
Intimate relationships can easily trigger stress responses, leaving partners responding to one another’s fight or flight systems in a response to past traumatic experiences that may not be present in their current reality.
This pattern can make a close relationships with someone with a traumatic past- whether childhood trauma or recent events- feel challenging and defeating over time.
If your partner is struggling with post traumatic stress disorder ptsd, here are some ways you can support them.
Create Safety
Some people who have experienced trauma end up internalizing their experience, feel shame, and think what they endured is their fault.
A safe, accepting space to explore and share their experience is the antidote to shame. Follow their lead on the amount and way they wish to talk about the trauma, and be patient as they look for words.
Someone who has been through trauma may feel unable to express their emotions. Plus, you could be the first person that has made them feel safe enough to revisit the experience.
Allow the healing process time and let them know you are open to hearing about what they’ve been through.
Don’t Take Reactions Personally
Emotional trauma can result in trauma reactions or responses. This occurs when someone responds to a present event as if they were in the danger they were in the past, activating the fight or flight response system.
In these moments, try to keep yourself calm and avoid taking things personally and further escalating conflict. If it seems like the intensity of the reaction you are receiving does not match the present situation, that may indicate you have touched the traumatic material in some way.
If this happens, it’s okay to feel frustrated. Resist the urge to defend yourself, which will only intensify the trauma response in the moment. Encourage your partner to consider whether traumatic responses are getting activated.
Educate Yourself
Trauma responses can be confusing to witness and understand. You may even finding yourself judging your partner for not expressing their pain the “right” way, even though there are many “normal” ways to express the effects of trauma.
Educating yourself regarding the impacts and responses to traumatic experiences can prepare you to support your partner, and also shows your partner you are committed to healing together.
Here are some recommended books about trauma:
Acknowledge their Experience
Part of the trauma healing will involve both partners, and some of it will also occur on an individual level. Validate your partner for what they have been through.
Support them how you can, but also acknowledge they may need to heal in ways that you have to let them do on their own.
As much as you love them, your partner’s trauma is not yours, and you cannot do this work for them.
Support Their Individual Therapy
Support your partner in the individual practices that help them heal. These could include:
Support Boundaries
One of the difficult parts of trauma is feeling isolated or misunderstood. If your partner has gone through a traumatic event, they may have certain situations they do not want to put themselves in to protect their mental health.
Advocate for them and support them to set boundaries that will make them feel safe and comfortable.
Your partner also may wish to keep their experience private, even from family or close friends. Support their wishes in the extent they share, and if you feel you need your own support, speak to a therapist instead of someone in your life who could impede on their privacy.
Attend Couples Therapy Together
Relationships can act as a mirror and be a clear place where partners can see unhealed parts of themselves and of one another.
However, one of the most healing experiences for someone who has experienced trauma is a secure attachment with a partner. A secure attachment provides the safety and security that a trauma survivor can share their experience without shame or fear of scaring off their partner.
An emotionally focused couples therapist trained in trauma can help create the safety to process traumatic experiences. This process can strengthen a bond and make couples feel even closer.
The most important part of healing from trauma for those in intimate relationships is participation in both individual and couples therapy.
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