Trauma can make it extremely difficult to maintain relationships as it forces us to constantly remain in 'fight or flight' mode. Feeling constantly on edge and that you need to be on high alert at all times makes it extremely difficult to trust another person. Trauma looks different for every individual.
Traumatic events, on the other hand, can create the most complex and difficult cases of intimacy avoidance. And a few examples of these events include the following: Physical or sexual abuse. Verbal abuse.
Living through traumatic events may result in expectations of danger, betrayal, or potential harm within new or old relationships. Survivors may feel vulnerable and confused about what is safe, and therefore it may be difficult to trust others, even those whom they trusted in the past.
Trauma causes the body to go into survival mode—fight, flight, or freeze—at the time it occurs. These effects may linger, triggering our physiology to disburse stress hormones such as cortisol that have the side effect of making us feel disconnected and withdrawn, decreasing our connection to anyone we love.
“Some of the many ways trauma can impact sexual response can be dissociating during sex (when you just tune out and leave your body), numbness and physical pain, difficulty getting aroused, flashbacks during physical arousal, getting triggered, panic attacks, difficulty trusting your partner, wanting to have rougher or ...
Adults may display sleep problems, increased agitation, hypervigilance, isolation or withdrawal, and increased use of alcohol or drugs. Older adults may exhibit increased withdrawal and isolation, reluctance to leave home, worsening of chronic illnesses, confusion, depression, and fear (DeWolfe & Nordboe, 2000b).
A fourth, less discussed, response to trauma is called fawning, or people-pleasing. The fawn response is a coping mechanism in which individuals develop people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict, pacify their abusers, and create a sense of safety.
Trauma dumping refers to sharing a traumatic story without thinking about how it will affect the listener, or oversharing in an inappropriate context.
Much like love bombing, trauma bonds can give the resemblance of love. They're often confused for love because of the trying nature, and when you love someone, you do try. Trauma bond relationships are driven by fear, not love, which is the biggest differentiator between trauma bonds and love.
When you've been through a relational trauma where someone has let you down, hurt you or betrayed you, it may feel terrifying to learn to trust another person again. It can be even more overwhelming to think about forming an intimate relationship, as you want to be sure you're doing it "right".
Challenging feelings & beliefs
Your partner may experience bouts of intense sadness, guilt, anger, or shame related to a past traumatic event. They may believe that there's nowhere safe for them to be, even when there's no direct or real threat in front of them.
Acting clingy
An individual might hold on to a relationship even though it consistently makes them feel frightened or unloved. Moreover, relational trauma can also lead people to feel and act clingy even when they're in a loving, stable relationship. This may occur with no obvious reasons for being insecure.
While the trauma itself doesn't serve as a catalyst for developing a kink (which is a popular misconception), it can be alleviated through play. “For example, a sexual assault survivor might initially feel afraid, weak, and powerless during their actual sexual assault,” Hughes writes in Psychology Today.
For example, talking to a partner excessively about work, being away from home, having little time or energy after working long hours, or work interfering in 'personal time' (like checking work emails in bed) can all contribute to a lack of intimacy in a relationship.
There are many root causes of intimacy disorder. Most can be attributed to traumatic childhood experiences such as verbal, physical or sexual abuse, emotional neglect, substance abuse in the home, the death of a parent, or exposure to or experience of rejection.
Healthy Relationships vs.
One way to determine whether you're in a healthy relationship or a trauma bond is to focus on how your relationship consistently makes you feel. A healthy relationship makes you feel supported, secure, and confident, while a trauma bond makes you feel fearful, anxious, or put down.
Due to the toxic nature of a trauma bonded relationship, individuals suffering abuse will find it difficult to leave the relationship. Loved ones may have difficulty understanding why the person experiencing abuse does not just end the relationship. However, breaking free of a trauma bond often takes time and support.
If you live with complex trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), trauma dumping or oversharing could be a natural trauma response and coping mechanism.
overexplained; overexplaining. transitive + intransitive. : to explain (something) to an excessive degree. The stories tended to be as simple as a good children's picture-book, so that nothing needed to be overexplained.
When individuals talk about painful experiences with a safe, supportive, and attuned human; they learn that the trauma can be dealt with and difficult emotions can be tolerated. Memories can be organized in a healthy way rather than developing problematic beliefs and self-blame (e.g., “this is all my fault.”).
Fawning is a trauma response where a person develops people-pleasing behaviors to avoid conflict and to establish a sense of safety. In other words, the fawn trauma response is a type of coping mechanism that survivors of complex trauma adopt to "appease" their abusers.
Fawning or people-pleasing can often be traced back to an event or series of events that caused a person to experience PTSD, more specifically Complex PTSD, or C-PTSD.