Why it's important to know about minority mental health

Here’s what trauma can do to relationships?

Trauma is an emotional response to an overwhelming event, series of events or a set of circumstances that are distressing and/or life-threatening. The traumatic event exceeds an individuals capacity to cope and has short term and long term consequences for their overall functioning and wellbeing, which includes relationships. As a result of experiencing trauma, people may find it difficult to initiate and sustain healthy relationships with people, be it friends, family, partners or colleagues.?

Traumatic events deeply impact people’s sense of safety in relationships.? Survivors of trauma may enter relationships with expectations of harm and may find it difficult to distinguish between safety and danger in relationships. This can lead to difficulty in trusting others and forming close interpersonal connections.?

Trauma also impacts an individual’s sense of self and identity. Trauma survivors often hold deep-seated feelings of shame and guilt for the bad things that happened to them. They may have learnt to view themselves as unloveable or a burden to those around them which can make it harder for them to connect to other people. This may manifest as fears of rejection and abandonment in relationships. Trauma survivors may cope by isolating themselves completely from others or they may become too involved in their relationships leading to dependency.?

Trauma also fosters feelings of helplessness and powerlessness which can lead to controlling behaviours in relationships. Feeling unsafe and threatened in relationships can also contribute to anger and aggression in relationships. This could make it harder for people to sustain relationships.?

Emotional and physical intimacy can become difficult for trauma survivors. They may feel numb or have trouble expressing and experiencing their emotions in relationships. Feeling unsafe, confused and overwhelmed all the time, makes it difficult to form authentic connections with people.

Very often, trauma can occur within a relationship, usually with a significant person such as a caregiver or a romantic partner. Examples include childhood abuse, intimate partner violence, domestic abuse (among others). Here people experience a violation of trust from a person or people that were supposed to be a primary support system for them. These experiences of betrayal and loss make it harder for individuals to have faith in receiving care and support from people in future relationships which holds them back from building fulfilling relationships.?

Early relationships with caregivers form a template for our future relationships known as our attachment style. When relationships are characterised by abuse, neglect or inconsistent caregiving they can create insecure attachment styles that can affect a person’s sense of trust, intimacy, boundaries, communication and self-regulation in relationships.?

It is essential for trauma survivors to have access to aid from professionals who employ trauma-informed care. This could be in work with therapists, support groups, medical practitioners or any other professional who works with trauma survivors.?

A trauma-informed therapist or other practitioner focuses on building trust and a sense of security in their relationship with trauma survivors. They allow clients to experience control, choice and establish a felt sense of safety throughout the treatment process. These are typically experiences that trauma survivors have never had before and can be powerful in the healing process. This can enable them to become more aware and shift relationship patterns that have resulted from trauma so they can build more fulfilling relationships.

By : Priyanka TS