How Trauma Affects Relationships

If you have experienced a trauma, are struggling with its symptoms, and you are married, you have probably discovered that trauma affects relationships. As therapists who work with Emotionally Focused Therapy, we see both the pain and power of intimacy. Ironically, love can hurt us but love can also heal us. The bitter and the sweet are in the same fountain. An intimate relationship, when it loses safety and security, can be a torture chamber inflicting pain. But when safety and security are in place, it can be a healing chamber healing pain. That is the goal of the therapy tool we use, Emotionally Focused Therapy: making your relationship a healing place.

Things That Can Cause Trauma In A Relationship

There are many things that happen within a marriage relationship, some intentional and some unintentional, that can cause trauma. Things like marital conflict, affairs, miscarriage, death of a child, chronic illness, loss of a job are a few traumas that can happen within a marriage. But there are also traumas that one or both partners bring into the marriage, such as combat stress, sexual abuse, childhood abuse, spousal abuse from a previous marriage, to name a few.

When one or both partners in a marriage have trauma, it creates what we call a “disorganized, or chaotic, attachment style.” In a disorganized attachment style, the traumatized person pulls their partner close but then pushes them away, going back and forth between wanting intimacy and fearing intimacy. The closeness they crave as human beings is the very thing that traumatized them.

Consequences of Trauma in a Relationship

Trauma, whether it happens within the marriage or happened before the marriage, has the same result: it creates a disconnection from others and the world around us. People with trauma tend to isolate themselves, which causes its own kind of trauma: the desperate need for closeness but the inability to sustain it without sabotaging it. So, tragically, couples where one or both of the partners have trauma are stuck, and they need someone to come alongside them and help them get unstuck.

The Power of Emotionally Focused Therapy for Trauma in a Relationship

What trauma does to a person is, it causes de-regulation. The person loses the ability to regulate their emotions and relate to people in a healthy way. The perfect place for a trauma survivor to learn to re-regulate his or her emotions and gain a sense of well-being is in a safe, connected relationship. In Emotionally Focused Therapy, we help partners create a safe harbor and secure haven with one another in which healing from traumas can happen and new patterns of interacting can take root and grow.

We talk about the things that have the couple stuck and trapped in a negative cycle of conflict, create a space where deep feelings can be shared and received, repair wounds and start to re-connect as partners and lovers on a deep emotional and spiritual level. We find ways to work through the trauma of affairs, losses, hurtful words, past scars, and regain trust and the bond that drew the couple to one another in the first place.

Research proves that when couples have this safe, secure connection, it creates a resiliency against future traumas and stressors like nothing else can. Study after study into Emotionally Focused Therapy shows 90% effectiveness in creating greater happiness and improvement of the relationship after 8-20 sessions. That’s why it is the most sought-after form of couple’s therapy.

If you are struggling in your marriage and trauma is a factor, I urge you read about trauma therapy and reach out to us at SoulCare Counseling to schedule a free thirty-minute consultation to get you started on the road to that happy marriage you long for.