3 Ways That Trauma Makes Us Sabotage Our Relationship (Talk)

Hi,

This is Orit Krug,

Board certified dance movement therapist and trauma and relationship expert.

Today,

I would love to have a chat about why trauma often leads people to sabotage their relationships.

Relationships that would otherwise be healthy and loving and joyful,

But become stressful and full of resentment and blame and nitpicking due to old trauma.

To begin,

Let's talk a little bit about the science behind why trauma often leads people to sabotage their relationships.

Trauma makes us over reactive and hypersensitive to threats of danger that aren't often truly present.

It's like having an alarm system for your home that's overly sensitive.

And even when there's someone walking 500 feet outside of your house,

The vibrations of those footsteps,

It sets off the alarm,

Calls the police and makes a huge deal out of something that was never actually dangerous because that person who was walking by never intended to break into your home.

This is an example of how the nervous system becomes wired after trauma for fear,

For danger,

For looking at all the signs that you're going to get hurt again,

Even when they're not actually based in reality.

So you may hear your partner sighing loudly across the room in frustration or forgetting to pick up your favorite snack from the supermarket.

And all of a sudden,

Within a second,

Your inner alarm system goes into fight,

Flight,

Freeze or shutdown response.

And you either explode on your partner wondering why do they forget to get your favorite snack?

Why are they upset at you?

I mean,

They must be upset because they side in frustration.

It must have to do with wanting to leave you or you not being good enough.

Or maybe you shut them out for days and you don't really talk to them for no rational reason in response to these little things that feel like real signs.

They feel huge in the moment,

Just like for the alarm system,

It felt real.

That threat felt real.

But in retrospect,

For so many of my clients,

Once they heal,

They realize that those things were never even remotely a big deal.

They were never really signs,

But they were blown so out of proportion because the threat felt really real to their nervous system,

Which is their survival system.

So I'll give you an example of a couple that I recently worked with.

Before they joined my couples program,

They were about to get divorced before giving it one last shot by working with me.

Because everything,

And I mean all the tiniest things,

Would become huge fights.

And like,

Oh my God,

What are we doing?

This is never going to work.

We're never going to make it.

It just constantly came down to that.

If she asked to take out the trash,

His old childhood trauma of not ever doing things good enough would get triggered and he'd either get defensive or he would put it off or not do it at all,

Which then triggered her old trauma of nobody cares about what I need.

Why doesn't anyone listen to what I want?

So you can see how this cycle can completely derail a relationship because everything,

Every interaction,

Every question,

Every word is just firing these red signals that make things so much more filled with seriousness and anger and resentment than it really needs to be.

And this couple that I worked with,

They tried couples counseling and conflict resolution coaching and many,

Many years of just trying to make a change.

But none of those things worked because it didn't change how their nervous systems were wired and reacting impulsively to each other until we finally did that together through my dance therapy couples program.

And in a few minutes,

I will share more about how my dance therapy couples process works and what it looks like and how it can be way more effective,

Much more quickly,

Much more deeply where traditional talk therapy and couples counseling has its limitations,

Especially for trauma.

But before we get into that,

I want to share with you three signs that you may be sabotaging your relationship that may not feel so healthy right now,

But if not due to old trauma would be healthy and exciting and joyful and full of spark.

So let's get into these three signs right now.

The first sign is that past trauma comes rushing back at the first sign of conflict.

So when you have unresolved trauma from your past relationships,

Even all the way back to childhood,

Which is usually where my client's first trauma occurred,

Your nervous system will automatically react in fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

Or shut down at the first sign of conflicts.

So even if you're in a healthy,

Loving relationship right now,

It can feel like the past trauma from your childhood or X is going to happen all over again.

And this is so out of your control because your brain and body register the threat in under a second.

And before you know it,

You're in survival mode and you're defending yourself,

You're attacking your partner.

Now your mind knows that your partner is nothing like the ones from the past,

But your primal body does not know it yet.

Instead of being able to stay present in the conversation and become closer by getting through conflict together,

You might fight back or leave the room.

You might even become silent or completely shut them out.

If you're feeling like there's shame around this and regret,

I understand because I was there.

But I want you to know that this is not your fault.

Your body is wired to react this way right now because of past trauma.

And it makes you sabotage your relationship by creating massive blowouts or avoiding conflict altogether.

The second sign is that love doesn't feel quite right without all the drama.

So whether you have experienced trauma in your childhood or past romantic relationships,

Your experience of love has been all drama,

Trauma,

And maybe even violence.

It may sound counterintuitive,

But your nervous system and body feels so much safer and more quote unquote loved in a tumultuous relationship.

So now that you're in a calm relationship,

There's something missing.

There's a deep void.

Or maybe it feels like they don't really love you because there's no grand dramatic gesture.

Like I'm sorry,

I love you.

Here,

Here's a puppy.

Your partner shows you that they care and love you in smaller ways,

But it doesn't feel like enough.

Even when your partner gets mad and they're pretty chill about it,

It's like,

Why don't you care?

Because you're used to your ex partner yelling and flipping out,

And that's the only way you knew they cared.

When your nervous system is adapted to drama and trauma,

It feels really uncomfortable and really unsettling in your body.

It makes you want to create drama to fill that void,

Or you might just be waiting for all the crap to hit the fan instead of being present and enjoying your healthy relationship.

The third and final sign is that you need constant reassurance.

Now while your past trauma is not your fault,

There's a huge part of you that deep down believes that you deserved all that hurt and abandonment that you experienced.

That's why you never feel good enough for your partner or really worthy of their love.

No matter how much your partner tries to show you this love,

It's too hard to believe that it's true.

You need them to keep proving it to you,

And even then,

Even when they do try to go out of their way to prove it to you,

You still can't accept it or believe it.

This creates doubt and constant worry that they're eventually going to realize how quote unquote flawed you are and end up leaving,

Which ironically pushes them away to the point of wanting to leave,

Which is a self-fulfilling prophecy of,

See,

I knew I was supposed to be left.

I knew I wasn't good enough.

As you question their every act of love,

You reject them and show them that what they're doing isn't good enough.

And they feel like they'll never be able to satisfy you and eventually start building their own walls of self-protection and resentment,

Which is the kind of thing that ends a lot of relationships and marriages and divorce.

Now if you resonate with one or more of those signs,

Again,

I'm reminding you that this is not your fault.

This is the way that your nervous system is currently wired.

And in fact,

Despite all of that,

You are capable of experiencing healthy,

Lasting love,

Even if you experienced trauma in the past and it's affecting you in this way right now.

You might not believe that because maybe you've been in talk therapy for many years,

Or if you're a lot like my clients,

You've tried talk therapy and energy healings and meditating and yoga and alternative therapies like EMDR and somatic experiencing.

And it's like,

No matter what you try,

You still are stuck in these sabotaging patterns.

And you may start to conclude that this is your fault,

That you're damaged goods,

That maybe you're supposed to just be this way without really ever experiencing the kind of love you're wanting.

But again,

If you're like most of my clients,

This is another lie.

This is another false belief.

And for them,

What they needed was this dance therapy process that helps them get into their bodies,

Access the old trauma,

And not just create,

But also sustain healthy,

Lasting love.

I don't mean to sound like I'm picking on traditional therapies or even alternative therapies.

But what research really shows us is that the left hemisphere of our brain,

Which is the part that's in charge of verbal language,

And has the ability to make logical sense of any situation,

That is the less dominant hemisphere when trauma occurs.

And actually,

Research and brain mapping shows that the left hemisphere often shuts down or goes offline during traumatic events,

Which is why talk therapy and couples counseling are often limited in helping people resolve their trauma and relationship issues,

Even through cognitive awareness or mindfulness,

Or positive thinking and gratitude exercises.

Because how can we access memories from the part of the brain that goes offline during trauma?

It's like trying to save a Word document when your computer is already rebooting.

Maybe it remembered something before the reboot,

But chances are it's not very accessible.

And it's also really annoying when that happens,

When the thing you're working on doesn't save.

So in my practice of dance therapy that is based on the latest neuroscience and research on healing trauma in a way that is safe and effective and lasting,

What happens is working with my clients,

We access those trauma memories stored in the nonverbal part of the brain,

The more dominant hemisphere that tends to remember more of the trauma,

Including the amygdala and the hippocampus.

And we rewire the nervous system through a specialized movement process that creates new neural pathways and changes stuck behaviors that my clients have been trying to change for decades in more traditional therapy.

Also with dance therapy,

There's this movement piece,

This part that we include movement that is crucial for breaking old patterns that stem from trauma because movement is the vehicle for which we express ourselves and communicate to our partners and literally move around in our environments in the world.

So earlier in this chat,

I mentioned a couple who felt like they were doomed and like the only option was to get divorced and break apart their family.

But when we started working together through movement,

They were able to see their patterns revealed once I had them communicate nonverbally through movement through their bodies.

We weren't spending all this time talking about their fights or their old conversations,

Which is all stuff that happens in their left hemisphere.

I was having them move further away from each other and then closer together and see what feelings are coming up,

What fears are coming up as we're moving closer or as we're disconnecting and moving away.

And the most transformative moment and session that we had together was when I had them move the way that they blame each other.

So this was a pretty open-ended intervention,

But I basically asked them to put into movement the way they tend to fight and blame each other.

So they could be doing direct and forceful movements or chaotic and all over the place.

And you know,

If you just imagine right now and in your imagination what people look like when they fight or maybe what it looks like in the movies,

I actually had them embody that together in that safe space of our therapy session.

And that changed everything.

That moment changed their entire relationship because it was the first time that they actually could see how their anger impacted each other because they could see the physical response happening in each other's bodies.

And they had this realization like,

Oh my God,

I didn't notice I was making you feel this way.

I don't want to make you feel this way.

And because we were doing that in session separate from a real life argument,

They could see each other more clearly than ever without those trauma tinted glasses.

And this allowed them to change the way that they've been interacting for over a decade.

Because when you're in a real life argument with your partner,

You have this self-righteousness.

You're like,

Oh,

Well,

I have a reason to be upset.

So yeah,

I am going to yell at you.

Or you get defensive and you don't want to feel hurt or upset.

And so you're like,

I'm not listening.

I'm not listening.

I'm blocking you out.

But for them to do this in session,

They finally had this compassion instead of being stuck in fear,

Blame,

And anger.

And it just saved their marriage.

We worked together for three months and it comes down to more than a moment in session,

But this was so pivotal.

And I want to help you understand even more how really the neuroscience behind how trauma gets stored in your body,

How it makes your nervous system impulsively react in fear,

And how to really shift that,

How to rewire your nervous system from fear to love and joy and openness and compassion,

Which feels so much better in our bodies than resentment and frustration.

So I have a course here on Insight Timer.

It's called You Are Worthy of Love,

Healing from Trauma.

And not only do we go over the latest research around why this is happening for you,

Why your old trauma is making you sabotage your relationship,

Even if you know in your mind that you are safe in your current relationship,

I also bring you through specific movements,

Explorations and exercises that will have you connecting to your body in a much safer way,

And really building the foundation for taking this last step that you may need to finally put your past in the past.

Now just to be clear and a bit of a disclaimer,

You're not going to be healing your trauma in this course if you decide to take it,

But I will be bringing you through,

I will be educating you and guiding you through some very essential foundational steps in order to be able to heal in a way that really lasts,

In a way that really works.

Because if you're anything,

Again,

If you're anything like my clients or like me,

Because I was in this same exact place seven years ago,

And you feel broken or you feel damaged or like you tried all these things,

You've spent so much money,

You've spent so much time and energy and you still feel stuck,

Please,

If any of this resonated with you,

Give yourself one more chance,

Because this could be the missing puzzle piece that you didn't realize you needed.

And if you're not really quite ready to take the course on Insight Timer,

You can always visit the link in my bio at oritkrug.

Com and check out what other clients have had to say,

What their stories are,

How they struggled with decades of therapy themselves and finally experienced a lasting transformation working through my unique process via dance therapy and trauma healing.

So again,

You can visit my Insight Timer course or you can visit my website,

Which is the link in my bio and you can also visit my Insight Timer profile for some meditations just to dip your toe in and see what this is all about.

Thank you so much for listening and please again remember,

This is not your fault and you deserve to be able to let healthy,

Lasting love in.