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We are all masters of self-sabotage — and most of us don’t even know it. Sometimes, I wish I had realized the impact of my childhood earlier. It would have made me a better partner in my healthiest relationship. But we don’t know what we know … until we do.

I never realized just how much of my reactions were controlled by childhood and relational trauma. I was too close to see it. As I’ve processed and integrated my past experiences, I’ve realized just how many people around me don’t realize that their experiences qualify as trauma.

People think about major life events when they think of trauma: war, death, and physical assault. But what we might not realize is that trauma isn’t about the scope of the event but the scope of its impact on the psyche. Trauma doesn’t have to be some earth-shattering event resulting in a mental breakdown. Trauma can be a small thing that no one else noticed; yet, it felt detrimental to us.

I went to therapy as an act of desperation. I was waiting for a diagnosis of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and one of my key symptoms was suicide ideation that occurs cyclically. I’d also gone through a challenging breakup, which made this more difficult to manage. I couldn’t trust my thoughts and impulses, and I got on a waiting list for a therapist in my area.

When I went in for that session and spilled out my life story and what brought me there, she suggested that I try a trauma therapy technique instead of traditional talk therapy. That’s how I ended up doing eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which has been proven effective at treating trauma up to and including PTSD. I went in as a skeptic but came out of that first session as a convert as I experienced the changes.

After the first EMDR session, I felt a shift in my perspective and reactions. I’m not exaggerating when I say that this therapeutic modality was life-changing. Over time, I began to have healthier relationships with family members, I became less reactive to other people, and I even was able to pinpoint how my trauma had impacted my relationships.

Trauma therapy addresses more than thoughts and feelings. It also addresses the impact of trauma on the nervous system. While we might not realize how much we were impacted, our bodies never forget.

“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” ~Bessel A. van der Kolk

I used to think trauma was something we just had to live with and accept. I learned how to survive it. I didn’t think there was any other option.

Our brains store trauma in short-term memory instead of relegating it to long-term memory storage. It’s close to the surface and easily accessed by triggers. Our emotional reactions to reminders of that trauma are often correlated with the ages and stages we were in when we experienced it. That’s significant when the trauma happened when we were children. We end up stuck in a relational loop of interpreting present experiences through the lens of the past. Our nervous system is responding to a real and present threat even when it doesn’t seem to exist.

5 Ways Past Trauma Poisons Healthy Relationship

A healthy relationship can give us the ideal environment to heal from trauma. We are free to be authentic and imperfect, and we feel safe being vulnerable with our partners. But even in the healthiest relationships, trauma can act as a poison that deteriorates its health.

1. Reacting Instead of Responding

Childhood and relationship trauma is stored in our bodies even when we try to push it out of our minds. What happens next is that we tend to be reactive rather than responsive. We aren’t seeing what’s happening in the present. Rather, we’re interpreting the events based on what has happened before.

We might seem like we’re overreacting — that our reaction is disproportionate to the event. While we’re overreacting to the present situation, our feelings are understandable and even potentially appropriate when trauma is taken into consideration. Our feelings are valid — even if they aren’t reflective of what’s happening. As we heal from trauma, we stop being reactive and develop the ability to respond to the current situation instead.

2. Hypervigilance Instead of Safety

Another side effect of trauma is that we are often hypervigilant. We can sense the change in someone’s energy and attitude. The subtlest shifts can send our nervous systems into a state of panic. We can never truly relax in our relationships because we’re always afraid that they’ll end.

Healing from trauma helps regulate the nervous system. We find that we are less reactive and able to feel safer in our relationships. Instead of taking every shift in energy as a potential threat, we learn to soothe our dysregulated nervous system and remind ourselves that it’s a side effect of trauma and not a sign that there’s a real and present danger.

“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” ~Bessel A. van der Kolk

3. Challenges to Intimacy

Childhood trauma, in particular, can create challenges to intimacy in relationships. Anxiously attached children grow into adults who need constant reassurance and fear that relationships will come to an end no matter how good they seem. Avoidantly attached children become adults with an innate fear of intimacy who are scared to trust love and accept it. Fearful avoidant attachment, sometimes referred to as disorganized attachment, can create a push-pull reality of wanting intimacy but doing everything possible to avoid it, too.

“The anxious person is scared to LOSE love. The avoidant person is scared to LIVE love.” ~Quentin G. Decamp

Left unaddressed and unhealed, our childhood experiences can stop us from growing our relationships. Instead of nurturing intimacy, we tend to back away from it — fearful that we’ll be hurt in the same ways we’ve been hurt before.

4. Lack of Self-Awareness

As a person who has spent time in therapy working to heal from trauma, it’s so much easier to see trauma reactions in others. Unfortunately, our pain can act as a barrier that prevents us from being self-aware. We might tell ourselves we’re highly sensitive or empathic instead of seeing the trauma link to hypervigilance. We may think our reactions are appropriate to the relationship or think that feeling unsafe in a relationship is the same thing as being unsafe in a relationship. We cannot see how trauma impacts everything we feel, think, and do.

Trauma therapy helped me have more compassion for others. I don’t take things as personally as I once did. Instead, I can see indicators of trauma and try to be gentle in my responses while maintaining healthy boundaries. I can see how self-awareness is challenging when there’s a lack of awareness of trauma and its impact.

5. We Repeat Relationship Patterns

One of the biggest ways that trauma impacts our relationships is that we tend to repeat past relationship patterns. We might see the pattern in our romantic relationships, but we might not see how it relates to earlier patterns. For instance, children with inconsistent parents might grow into anxiously attached adults who choose emotionally unavailable, avoidant partners. This plays out the child-parent dynamic of one person working hard to be loved while the other person gives it sparingly, if at all.

I’ve been guilty of all of these trauma side effects but none more than this. I thought I had to be perfect to be loved. I had grown up with the idea that love was conditional and could be taken away at any moment. It made me fearful. In some ways, it made me fierce. I would do anything to keep the love I had. I would try to be the perfect partner. I would work hard at it. I would be affectionate and romantic and hype up my partner however they needed. I could make myself their everything — even if it made me nothing.

I look back with such love and compassion for that version of myself who thought she had to work so hard to receive even the crumbs of love. I didn’t realize how lonely I was or how I kept choosing partners who let me stay that way. I admire my determination and effort, but I know that the days of me working that hard to maintain any relationship have gone. I realize now that the relational pattern I was in was reflective of my past trauma. As I’ve healed, I no longer want to engage in relationships where I have to be perfect or work so hard to be loved or to feel lovable.

The Antidote

Any therapist who makes us think that the only thing we can do about trauma is to talk about it and cope with it is not well-versed in trauma treatment. There is much more we can do. While EMDR might not be effective for every client, it has been proven to help many. Other trauma therapy modalities can also help us process and integrate our experiences.

Healthy relationships are precious. Sadly, failing to deal with past trauma can prevent us from maintaining our relationships. We can ignore the past. We can say we’re over it. We can try to rise above it. But our bodies remember what happened and no amount of brushing it off or sweeping it under the rug can heal us.

I cannot go back and be a healthier partner than I was. I look back and see that I was struggling with childhood and relational trauma while dealing with a very real medical diagnosis. It’s made it easier to forgive myself. I know that I’ll be a stronger partner next time because I’m a healthier person now.

Our childhoods are more than the past. Sometimes, they are very much present. They are shadows waiting to be discovered, wounds waiting to be healed, and poison simply waiting for us to realize there’s an antidote. Life may involve suffering, but the work of deep inner healing can bring about relief.

Originally published on Medium

Hope Springs Counseling - Crystal JacksonPhoto byCrystal Jackson

Crystal Jackson is a master's level trauma-focused mental health clinician with Hope Spring Counseling in Monroe and Athens, Georgia. Her work on trauma recovery, relationships, mental health, and personal growth has been featured on Medium, Thought Catalog, Elite Daily, Your Tango, and Elephant Journal.