Childhood Trauma: How Triggered Immaturity Destroys Intimacy

Past traumas that resurface in present relationships create unnecessary pain.

Every couple I’ve ever worked with has their dark underbelly of behaviors they feel foolish or embarrassed about. Because all intimate relationships have a crisscross symbolic parent/child component, it is impossible for a couple to avoid triggering each other’s childhood trauma at times and experiencing them as regressed to an earlier state of being.

“Get away from me. I never want to see you again, ever.”

“You’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met in my life.”

“You are a horrible person.”

“I’m going to leave and you’ll never see me again. Then you’ll be sorry.”

“I hate you.”

“You think you know everything. You’re really dumb.”

I have often heard adult intimate partners say these kinds of things to each other during a fight in my office. These are often smart, savvy, strategic, and diplomatic at other times or with other people. But, in the face of a heated argument with an intimate partner, they can spiral to an earlier age when these kinds of statements were appropriate to that time in their lives.

If the couple understands they are regressing, they would be able to overcome them easily after the emotional explosions subsided. But the childish words are being spoken from an adult to an adult in those moments, and can leave permanent scars.

Everyone is vulnerable to behaving in these ways if they don’t realize why or what is happening when they are triggered into regressive reactions. Feeling lost and young, the partners are no longer talking to each other, but to those who hurt them when these experiences first happened. The interactions are now doomed to continue until they die a natural ending, leaving both partners spent and sadly harmed in the same way they were when the traumatic events actually occurred.

Some couples just push the interactions under the rug and go on as if they never happened. Others realize that reparation must occur afterwards no matter why the regression happened. Sadly, many hold the other partner forever responsible, taking what words were spoken as actually meant in the current relationship.

No matter what the pattern, these regressive interactions, not explored and resolved, will happen again, building cumulative scars that will likely damage trust and intimacy in any relationship over time.

How can couples foresee these regressions coming, identify them as what they actually are, seek the true origin of them, and separate them from their current adult relationship?

How can they help each other realize when they are spiraling down into a past, powerless emotional time and change the outcome?

When you are interacting normally with each other, practice the following steps to prepare yourself for the next episode. You may not be perfect the first few times you are able to change your prior behavior, but it does get cumulatively easier.

Step 1: Decode the Triggers

Help each other identify the words, phrases, voice intonations, and facial expressions in the other that activate a regressive state.

“When you stand over me as if you are hovering and come at me in a machine gun-like way, I feel cornered and in danger. I want to run but I feel paralyzed with no place to go.”

“You say really mean things and then when I challenge you, you start to cry. I was never able to hit a girl, even if she was awful to me. I feel immobilized and powerless.”

Step 2: Tune Into Your Body

Help each other feel what happens to your body before you start to spiral downward.

“I can feel my throat start to tighten up as if I want to scream but nothing can come out.”

“My hands are forming tight fists like I have to be ready to defend myself.”

Step 3: Reclaim Your Past

Identify how old you feel when you are in a regressive state. You are not acting that way. You are that age again. When you have done that, try to remember who you were with and what was happening to you. Capture any dialogue you can remember and what your options were, if any.

“When I start to crumble, I feel as if I was about ten. My dad is coming at my mom. I’m frozen, feeling I should protect her but I am afraid of him. I feel guilty and that I should be punished but I don’t know why. Just that it’s my fault.”

“I feel really young, maybe two or three. I need something but someone is telling me that I am asking for too much and I feel like a burden. I want to disappear and not be there but I am trapped.” I can’t make it better, I can’t leave, and I can’t stand it. I’m terrified.”

Step 4: Intervene and Comfort

Plan together that, whenever each of you sees the other begin to spiral into a regressive trauma, that you will immediately stop arguing about the situation at hand and deal directly with the regression that is beginning to happen. If the person is falling too fast, the partner who is still OK may only be able to hold them close like the parent they wished they’d had, and tell them that it’s going to be OK and that they are safe.

Sometimes, sadly, both people are being triggered simultaneously and this step is harder to accomplish. Usually, the person whose trauma happened later in life, or was not as traumatic, has to be the first healer until the other partner can reciprocate.

“Hold on. You are shriveling down into yourself and looking at me as if I was going to harm you. I’m not your dad. It’s me. Come closer. Hold my hands. Look into my eyes. You’re going to be OK.”

“Your voice is rising and you are pacing. I’m not trying to corner you. Let’s just sit near each other and be still for a while. I can’t fix what I didn’t break, but I can help you see why I seem to be the person who hurt you. We can do this.”

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