How Trauma Affects Your Relationship, According to a Therapist

A trauma therapist describes why and how your past impacts your present relationship.

Trauma can come up in many different ways in relationships. Photo by Ba Tik from Pexels.

You get upset. He blows up. She shuts down. The next day you can’t even remember why it bothered you so much.

We’ve all been there, even therapists (we’re no more immune than anyone else). Here’s what I tell my clients about trauma and relationships, and the ways it can impact your day-to-day interactions with each other as well as your long term relationship.

Emotional Flashbacks Get Triggered

Many people in intimate relationships experience emotional flashbacks. In his book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Pete Walker describes emotional flashbacks like this: “You feel little, fragile and helpless. Everything feels too hard. Life is too scary. Being seen feels excruciatingly vulnerable … in the worst flashbacks an apocalypse feels imminently upon you.”

“You feel little, fragile and helpless. Everything feels too hard. Life is too scary. Being seen feels excruciatingly vulnerable … in the worst flashbacks an apocalypse feels imminently upon you.” — Pete Walker

Emotional flashbacks take us back emotionally to our childhood, often to the…