How Past Trauma Affects Relationships: Recognizing Projections, Building Trust, and Communicating Your Experience
written by Micah Brown
This article is NOT a replacement for treatment from a licensed professional. Any of the recommendations we make here that sound helpful to you should be discussed with your therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist before being implemented.
Approaching this topic will be a delicate operation. There is a difference between projecting your past trauma onto a current relationship and a toxic relationship that uses your past trauma against you and blames your trauma for issues within the relationship. That is not to say that past trauma cannot cause issues within relationships – the whole scope of this article is taking accountability for yourself and recognizing your own negative cycles.
Understanding Trauma and Its Emotional Impact
It is difficult to explain to those who have not experienced trauma just how devastating it can be for your psyche. The loss of a parent or sibling at a young age can have repercussions that reverberate well into adulthood. An abusive relationship, whether physically abusive or emotionally abusive, can create a high level of anxiety and result in PTSD or CPTSD at any age. These experiences, these traumas, wire your brain in such a way that your responses to everyday experiences can appear extreme to those who have not experienced what you have.
Those who served in wartime would come home with “Shell Shock” which is now understood to be PTSD and CPTSD. The sound of a car backfiring or fireworks exploding could send them into a spiral that puts their brains right back into combat mode and, in some cases, will make them believe they are in a combat situation.
When it comes to loss and abuse, the trauma responses are going to look different, but they are functionally the same. If you lived in a household where yelling would occur before physical violence, when somebody yells at you now, it could cause an immediate panic response that makes you want to hide and puts your mind right back into the past.
If a parent walked out and never returned, this could lead to abandonment issues, which can manifest in any number of different ways, though commonly, those who suffer this type of PTSD tend to either push people away, or hold on too tightly in relationships so they don’t experience loss again.
Untreated PTSD can wreck havoc on all types of relationships from family connections, to friends, to romantic entanglements.
source: https://www.traumawheel.com/
What It Means to Project Trauma Onto a Partner
All trauma responses come from the brain having a response to some kind of stimuli, generally external but not always. The brain then causes the body to go into fight or flight mode and floods the body with adrenaline. How the individual physically responds is determined by a number of factors, including what the trauma was, what their response was to the trauma initially, and how powerful the sense of danger and anxiety are within the person. Those who were in abusive situations could find themselves either shutting down to protect themselves or becoming violent to fight back against their abuser (even though the abuser isn’t present).
This is how somebody who suffers from PTSD or CPTSD projects their trauma onto the people around them in the moment.
However, it is possible to project trauma without being in the midst of a PTSD episode. People who have experienced abuse are hyper-aware of the things and people around them. They were taught early on in their life that being careful and acting a certain way reduced the possibility of being abused. This hyper-awareness can last long after the abuse and become a point of contention within relationships.
Somebody who has experienced trauma may see traits that do not exist in their partners, friends or family. For example, if an individual has a fear of abandonment, they may believe that their partner constantly has one foot out the door. This may cause them to become accusatory about things and feel as though they cannot trust their partner. Ultimately, if the response isn’t addressed, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the person may ultimately leave to avoid being further accused.
The Shame Around Trauma and How It Silences Survivors
Despite a deeper level of understanding, many who suffer from past traumas continue to try and hide their experiences out of shame. People are embarrassed by their trauma because it is “outside the norm.” Even if they are in treatment, the idea of telling a potential partner about their past can be incredibly overwhelming and frightening. In cases of sexual abuse victims, these feelings can be even more pronounced as so much of society has taught us these things somehow make them“dirty.”
I recall an old episode of the TV show Hill Street Blues where a character played by Linda Hamilton was raped and her boyfriend could no longer bring himself to have sex with her because of the stigma behind being raped. While the view on that has been changing, there is still a sense of shame when somebody is sexually assaulted and, unfortunately, there are still those out there who feel that the victim has been somehow tainted by it.
Ways to Start the Conversation about Your Trauma
The best way to get past the stigma of trauma is to communicate it to those closest to you. While that sounds easy, we also understand that it is not. Speaking with your professional about methods of discussing past trauma with those close to you is going to be the best way to handle your specific situation. While the following suggestions maybe helpful to start the conversation with your therapist about what might work, we would encourage you to bring anything up you read here with your therapist if you feel it could be helpful to you. Remember, we are not licensed professionals!
1. Talk to Them
The most direct way of approaching the subject of your past is to simply let the people know you need to talk them about something and then explain your past clearly and concisely. You can let them know ahead of time if they can ask questions or if you just want to share your experiences and let it sit with them for a little while before continuing the conversation. Either method is fine and remember that you can stop the conversation at any point if you begin to feel uncomfortable.
2. Write a letter
Jumping straight into a discussion like that can be incredibly difficult, so there are other ways you may find to communicate your experiences with them. One possible way is to share it in a letter that they read. You can choose whether or not you want to be with them when they read the letter, but you want to prepare them in some fashion for what they are about to read. That doesn’t mean sharing the contents of the letter, but perhaps letting them know if they might experience any triggers for themselves while reading.
Closely related to letter writing is using a couples Journal app like Embrace to communicate difficult topics to your partner. We have an entire entry about using Embrace to discuss difficult topics and I would encourage you to read it if you think this might be a helpful way for you to go.
3. Have Them Join Your Therapy Session
Most therapists are more than happy to help you communicate with the ones closest to you. You will need to sign some paperwork that will allow those you want to join the session to actually be a part of it, but after that having your therapist there to help you through the act of talking about your past may be the support you need to get through it.
Learning to Trust Again After Trauma
Perhaps the hardest thing you can do as a survivor of trauma is trust the people around you. Working on trust is a big part of therapy for those who suffer from PTSD and CPTSD. Not everybody is like the people from your past who hurt you, and the likelihood is that there are many people in your life ready to rally around you to help in any way they can.
If you don’t have a therapist and suffer from past trauma, we encourage you to find one that works for you. We understand that it may not feel possible to get and pay for a therapist, but please know there are resources available that can help you find a therapist and cover the costs. Many universities even have free options for people who cannot afford a therapist.
As a final reminder, we are not licensed professionals, though we do have experience with trauma and loss. We encourage everybody to acquire a professional and work with them to find your own way through your trauma. Nothing is going to be a one-size-fits-all answer. We hope this has been helpful and that you can take some of this to your therapist and come up with a plan that will assist you with a plan to help you manage your past traumas or the traumas of those you love.
