Trauma and Your Relationship: How to Heal

When you’re in a relationship with a trauma survivor, it is likely that you have become aware of a few obstacles that can be difficult to overcome, including that it is simply difficult to see someone you care about struggling with the impact of trauma or abuse (whether the trauma occurred before or during your relationship). Still, it’s possible to have a loving, healthy, and connected relationship.

The ability to allow your partner to feel safe and letting them know they can trust you are the key components to healing your relationship when trauma is a factor.

How Can Trauma Impact Your Relationship?

The answer to that question often depends on the type of event (or events) your partner has experienced. It could be anything from child abuse, rape, or combat, to a car accident. Each different type of trauma leads to different types of environmental cues that lead the survivor to re-experience and go into survival mode. Regardless of the type of trauma, there are certain obstacles that usually affect relationships.

Some of the most common hurdles you’ll face with your partner include:

• They may have difficulty accepting love

• Emotional distancing

• Persistent doubt in your faithfulness and commitment to them

• Over or under-reaction to conflict

It’s important to understand that trauma survivors need different types of support. They need to take care of themselves, and they also need certain elements from your relationship.

Let’s take a look at these two areas

1. Self-Care for You and Your Partner

   Trauma survivors devote a great deal of energy to taking care of their own emotional, mental, and physical health. Everyone has a different way of doing this, but one of the best things a survivor can do is to have an amazing support system which includes you, as their partner. For most, professional help may be needed. Don’t ever try to force your partner into seeking out help, but instead, you can encourage it in a positive manner. Also, remember that while you’re encouraging your partner’s self-care, don’t forget to take care of yourself. Trauma is exhausting for both people involved, so take time for yourself  to make sure you’re healthy and emotionally prepared to support your partner. Don’t be afraid to seek out your own professional help. It’s not uncommon for partners of trauma survivors to need extra help, too.

2. Supporting Your Partner

   There are many different ways you can be supportive of your partner after they’ve dealt with a traumatic event. A way to start is to educate yourself about the impact of trauma. The more you understand what your partner is going through, the easier it will be to heal your relationship. Communication is the biggest key when it comes to improving your relationship with a trauma survivor. The right kind of communication helps to provide comfort and safety. This can be done with a simple pattern known as ‘Mirroring, Validation, and Empathy.’ It can help to restore a feeling of peace and stability which is especially important when your partner is having a flashback or going through a very difficult time. Gently bring your partner’s attention to the present when they’re struggling with something from the past. When you’re able to remind them that they’re currently safe and secure, and this has the potential to calm them quickly.

Loving a Survivor of Trauma

Relationships are challenging to begin with. When you’re in a relationship with someone who has been through a traumatic experience, it’s even harder, but it’s not impossible to practice deep healing techniques that can help to heal wounds from the past.

If you’re still struggling with how to help your partner, or if your relationship is suffering due to trauma, feel free to contact me please contact me at (717) 288-5064 / gregghammond@restoringbalancelancaster.com and schedule an appointment today. Together, we can develop effective strategies for healing.

“The Haunting of Hill House” Part 2: Trauma and Its Aftermath

Traumatizing experiences shake the foundations of our beliefs about safety, and shatter our assumptions of trust. Because they are so far outside what we would expect, these events provoke reactions that feel strange and "crazy". Even though these reactions can be unusual and disturbing, they are typical and expected. By and large, they are normal responses to abnormal events.

Trauma symptoms originally evolved to help us recognize and avoid other dangerous situations quickly (before it was too late). Sometimes these symptoms resolve themselves within a few days or weeks of a disturbing experience. Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD, but when many symptoms persist for weeks or months, or when they are extreme, treatment with a professional can be beneficial. On the other hand, if symptoms persist for several months without treatment, then avoidance can become the method used to cope with the trauma (and this strategy interferes with seeking professional help). Postponing needed intervention for a year or more, and allowing avoidance defenses to develop, could make this work much more difficult in the future.

We create meaning out of the context in which events occur, so there is always a strong subjective element in people's responses to traumatic events. An example of this would be in the case of disasters, where a broad cross-section of the population is exposed to the same traumatic experience, but  react with different coping mechanisms (both adaptive and maladaptive).

Some of the potential long term results of unresolved trauma include:

• fear, anxiety, worrying or ruminating (intrusive thoughts of the trauma)

• grief, disorientation, denial

• hyper-alertness or hypervigilance

• irritability, restlessness, outbursts of anger or rage

• emotional swings – like crying and then laughing

• Nightmares and flashbacks – feeling like the trauma is happening now

• feelings of helplessness and a sense of being out of control

• increased need to control everyday experiences

• minimizing the experience

• attempts to avoid anything associated with trauma

• tendency to isolate

• feelings of detachment

• emotional numbing or restricted range of feelings

• difficulty trusting and feelings of betrayal

• difficulty concentrating or remembering

• feelings of self-blame or survivor guilt

• shame

• lessened interest in everyday activities or depression

• unpleasant past memories resurfacing

• loss of a sense of order or fairness in the world; expectation of doom and fear of the future

• becoming obsessive

• increased use of alcohol and drugs

• questioning faith or religion

“The Haunting of Hill House” is a wonderful depiction of the effects of personal and familial trauma with each of the children showing multiples of the symptoms discussed above. When families share a trauma, each individual reacts to it in a different way, but the family also reacts as a unit, often playing out dynamics and patterns that serve to keep the family stuck in an unbeneficial cycle. If Hill House is personified as a monster that feeds on its inhabitants, the family unit itself is also personified as a kind of organism that thrives on suffering in the form of co-dependency. As the show progresses, you see each member of the Crain family pushed deeper into private psychological terrors that manifest as terrifying ghosts. Themes of generational trauma, inherited mental illness, and the guilt and fear that accompany them, run throughout the stories of the Crain siblings and their parents.

Hill House follows two timelines: the Crain siblings’ horrific childhood, and a more intimate look at how that trauma and its aftermath have dominated their lives. The Crains have tried to hide and push down their grief (Theo through meaningless sex, Luke through drugs, Shirley through controlling her environment, Steve through denial) and each has maintained a facade in their relationships with each other, despite their shared trauma experiences. Trauma holds such a primal place for the Crains (just like all of us) and their perception of themselves that the siblings even argue about their right to claim and discuss their childhood (as if they can control it by taking ownership of it).

Most of the problems faced by the Crain family members (infidelity, shame, dishonesty, addiction, emotional withholding, obsessive behavior) are all fairly “normal” family issues (in the sense that pretty much every family can tick off one of them in their family tree). When trauma occurs, it exacerbates the family issues to different degrees. Each of those problems are painstakingly traced back to their childhood summer living in Hill House.

Because of the mysterious death of their mother, the Crain children have not been able to get closure. They haven't been able to properly contextualize their mother’s death.

Shirley takes a direct approach to dealing with the trauma . Along with the death of her mother, and the experiences involving the rapid death of an entire litter of kittens (interestingly, motherless kittens who eventually succumb to disease… just like the Crains being motherless and succumbing to mental illness). Shirley ends up sublimating (a coping mechanism meaning an expression of anxiety in socially acceptable way) her childhood fear of death into a career of ‘fixing’ dead bodies by becoming a mortician. She distances herself from the emotions of death by focusing on the exterior of the bodies.

Steven’s belief system protects him from reality and it serves to insulate him from his family and the past. By establishing his own narrative about what happened, Steven has been able to compartmentalize the trauma he has experienced, which is a very elaborate coping mechanism.

Theo absorbs the experiences of those around her with a high degree of empathy and this allows her to take on a large amount of emotional pain from others. She does her best to shield herself through the use of the gloves, her alcohol usage, blunt demeanor, emotional numbing, and the purely physical relationships that she has in her life.

Luke’s use of drugs is his way of numbing his memory of trauma. It seems likely that Luke also has a potential of arrested development (emotional) as a result of his trauma as well. As his parents gives him the bowler hat, they makes it a point to tell him that the hat signifies him becoming a ‘big boy’, but then the hat is taken away from him by the ghost of William Hill, symbolically leaving him in a regressed state.

Nellie, along with Luke, seemed to receive the brunt of the emotional scarring as a result of their summer at Hill House. Nellie has moved through life with a sense of emptiness and feeling invisible to others, especially her family. This is best portrayed in the scene when Nell becomes invisible to her family and despite their attempts to find her, she goes undetected. This best encapsulates the Crain family dynamic in relation to Nell as her feelings are continually deprioritized in relation to her siblings.

In the show, family is protection (both Nell and Luke use counting up to seven, the number of members of their family unit, as a kind of coping mechanism and a way to keep the ghosts at bay) but it is also a painful repetition of fears and anxieties that have no end. The family was unable to get the help needed to allow them to use the power of family relationships for healing. Thankfully, there is a sense of coming together in the end of the show, but unfortunately, it was decades delayed.

While trauma and its impact is a theme of “The Haunting of Hill House,” it is extremely important that those with trauma in their history seek treatment from a professional.

For help with processing a trauma in the Lancaster, PA area, please contact me at (717) 288-5064 / gregghammond@restoringbalancelancaster.com and schedule an appointment today.

Is Control Getting in the Way of Your Relationships? Part 2

In the last entry we looked at the ways in which we exert control on others, ourselves, and our environment. Today, we look closer at what leads us to crave control and then, later, how seeking counseling can help in moving away from control and being at peace with the randomness of our lives.

What leads us to want so much control?

When we feel out of control, we experience a powerful and very uncomfortable tension between the need for control and the growing awareness of our inability to control. From an evolutionary perspective, if we are in control of our environment, then we have a far better chance of survival (if we could find a cave and secure the opening, we wouldn’t be attacked and eaten by a wild animal while we sleep). Our deep subconscious mind, therefore, gives us strong biochemical responses (fight/flight/freeze reactions) when we face some kind of danger, or in modern times, a perceived danger.

Other needs that lead to an urge for control include:

• The need for a sense of certainty about the future.

• The need for completion of unfinished things, so we don't have to worry about them..

• The need to understand how things work and to avoid confusion.

• The need for people (including ourselves) and things to be consistent and predictable.

Control issues may be related to:

• Traumatic or abusive life experiences

• A lack of trust

• Anxiety

• Fears of abandonment

• Low or damaged self-esteem

• A person's beliefs, values, and faith

• Perfectionism and the fear of failure

• Emotional sensitivity and the fear of experiencing painful emotions

Someone who struggles with a need for control may experience shame, anxiety, stress, depression, and a host of other mental health concerns.

Now that we have a greater understanding of how the urge for control is built in us, Let’s look at how psychotherapy can help relieve us from this heavy emotional energy drain.

How can Psychotherapy Help?

Addressing control issues in therapy involves unraveling and revealing the source of the need for control (which can be very different for each of us). In therapy we work together to address the underlying fear, emotions, or anxiety, and develop coping strategies. This process of increasing self-awareness can help a person begin letting go of the need for control.

Therapy can help a person identify the self-protective nature of the need for control (and realize that it comes naturally and is very normal, just not beneficial).

For example, maybe a person’s parents were absent or emotionally unavailable in childhood, or maybe their childhood home wasn’t a stable place. Emotional or physical instability and a lack of choices or independence can lead a person to seek control over other aspects of life. Recognizing and addressing this source of distress in therapy will help the person build the ability for self-compassion and embrace that part of themselves that needs protection and feels vulnerable.

How do you begin the process to heal?

It begins with finding out the “why’ behind the control issue.

Start with taking notice when your control stuff comes up so you can identify the self-protective nature it serves (what are you trying to avoid by seizing control? What is your fear?).

These are some questions to ask yourself in this process (remember to be compassionate and honest with yourself):

• Why am I triggered or why did I get triggered? (not in a blaming or shaming way, but solely from a place of     curiosity)

• When was the first time that I noticed this feeling present itself to me from my earliest memories and how did I cope with it at that time?

• What about this situation feels similar to when I was a child?
  

Once you are able to identify when/where in your life this was created ½ the battle of control is over. Then you bring yourself into the present moment and go deeper:

• Am I looking at the whole picture?

• Am I reacting from expecting the worst from a situation?

• What am I afraid will happen if I let go of control?

• Am I really ready to let go of control?

• Would letting go feel better than this?

• What will I gain if I let go?
  

The answers to these questions can lead you to work toward addressing the fear which gives the urge for control its energy (control is just the symptom of fear) and also open yourself up to the possibility of a better way to move through life.

Consider talking to someone that can provide you a safe space to address the fears leading to the unhealthy urge for control.

For help moving toward a more peaceful life, please contact me at (717) 288-5064 / gregghammond@restoringbalancelancaster.com and take the opportunity to make letting go of control a lot more comfortable!!

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