Relational Trauma Repair: Healing Complex Trauma Through Connection & Understanding
If you identify with having CPSTD (often Adult Children do, either those that grew up in Alcoholic homes or those with family dysfunction, parents with mental illness or parents who were emotionally immature), it can be a wonder where to begin the healing process.
Illustration by Veii Rehanne Martinez
The very nature of Complex Trauma makes it difficult to reach out, trust, to accept help and start to feel whole again. CPTSD is defined by having difficulty with emotion regulation, being hypervigilant, having difficulty in interpersonal relationships, avoidance of feeling and isolating from people, sometimes dissociating and sometimes trying to soothe through substances or other compulsive behaviors (Schwartz, 2020.)
If you have willingness and even a shred of self-compassion or care, this is the place to start. Having a therapist that understands you, can attune to you and travel alongside you as you process buried emotional experiences in a safe, resourced way, is also the bulk of the work. However, if this can also be done with others in a group setting or with the support of meetings, this can be even more healing for the individual. After all, relational trauma occurs in relationship; it is the experience of many tiny wounds (or rather large) over the course of many many years. CPSTD symptoms are the result of regular parental misattunement, attachment wounds, abuse, neglect (the lack of crucial needs) or regular exposure to fighting, violence, parental emotional dysregulation and/or parental compulsive behavior (substance abuse, workaholism, eating disorders, etc.)
So what are some of the steps or ways to heal? Here are some avenues that move towards change:
Establish Safety: This can be done in therapy, groups, meetings or in one’s personal life. This can begin by even understanding what it is to feel safe, going towards safe people and safe places and things. Often times, if one has complex trauma, they can perceive the present moment as a threat, perceiving a person/place/thing as threatening or dangerous when it might not actually be. An old Buddhist troupe likens this to going into a darkened room and seeing a squiggly item on the floor and perceiving this as a snake, only to turn on the light and find out its a rope. In therapy, safety can also be imagined through guided imagery or visualization as the body doesn’t know any differently from what the mind may be experiencing or communicating. Regular practice of imagining safety can begin to train the nervous system to have a sense of inner safety as well as to achieve an awareness of where to find that outside of the body. Clients begin to learn that even if they are feeling feelings in the moment or perceiving threat/danger (unless its truly a snake!) that they are actually safe in the room right now in the present moment.
Developing Self-Compassion & an Inner Loving Parental Voice: As feeling information arises in therapy, meetings or groups, it is important for them to be held with respect, love, compassion and care. An adult child can begin to find out where those loving voices or experiences may be in their past or current lives and begin to incorporate this resource into the internal work they are doing; they learn to treat their feeling experiences with compassion care and supportive, affirming words. Even if one can’t find a “voice or words”, one can begin to feel into an experience of being loved and held— even if by an animal or another type of loving figure that doesn’t use words at all!
Knowing Your Story: If you’ve ever been in therapy, you probably know a bit of your story already. As you process more and more of the narrative, you can begin to reframe some of the information as well as beliefs and messages that were passed along. You will also begin to pair and process the feeling information that goes along with the story; this helps to be validated in relationship by another human as well as to understand these feelings, put them into words and to then meet the feelings in the middle. The more you know and become conscious of, the less this will be acted out in other relationships—but don’t worry, therapy goes at your pace and you don’t have to go digging and revisiting information over and over— even a little bit goes a long way and the processing is done in small bits.
Mindfulness, Presencing Techniques & Developing Emotion Regulation Skills: In certain therapies, especially those that incorporate mindfulness and connecting with present-related information, you begin to learn how to cope with emotions and content in relationship. Many trauma-related therapies use resourcing methods first before going into any feeling information; these resources may be grounding techniques or visualization techniques. Mindfulness and present awareness can begin to make emotions feel more tolerable, processable and titrated so that you can meet them in the middle. This can happen with more consistency and accountability when in a therapeutic relationship that’s guiding you through the information gently.
Building Healthy Relationships: Sometimes you will talk about relationships openly in therapy to try to understand what difficult dynamics are getting recreated in relationship as well as what feelings and parts of yourself are getting triggered in relationship. Clients can begin to recognize safety, trust and health in relationships more readily while also learning to set boundaries, assert one’s own opinion and deal with any codependent tendencies that might arise (such as feeling overly responsible for others, caretaking, people-pleasing and wanting to fix others’ situations or emotions.)
Coming Out of Isolation & Into More Connection: As you share thoughts, feelings and your story in therapy, the shame and fear can start to subside. The more one shares in a safe space (in meetings and/or therapy), the more one can feel connected and less alone. This may feel frightening or awkward at first, but with time and a built safe connection, the relationship can grow and more intimacy will deepen. This same intimacy and closeness can be carried over to other relationships.
Continued Self-Reflection: Clients can establish a practice of turning inward and listening to one’s self. Often when there is complex trauma in relationship, someone learned to listen to others more than themselves. For example, if the environment is chaotic, loud, controlling or overwhelming, this forces someone to become hypervigilant and look outside of themselves more than looking inward. In that way, someone may lose feeling information as well as an understanding of their own wants, needs, dreams and desires. Therapy allows you to quietly turn in again and reflect, to consider pointed questions about your life and where you would like to take things. How can you start to live a life of joy, fun and positivity over that of fear, self-doubt, isolation and overwhelm? Clients can journal in between sessions or use workbooks to ask themselves questions in between sessions.
Healing complex trauma is not linear — in fact in can feel like doing a loop-d-loop. However, in the end, one can start to move towards growth and the life they would like to live. They can begin to have more fulfilling relationships, a fuller life of fun and ease and new ways of dealing with the day-to-day challenges with resiliency and grit.
Bibliography
Dr. Schwartz, Arielle. A Practical Guide to Complex Trauma: Compassionate Strategies to Begin Healing from Complex Trauma. Callisto, 2020.
