When you’ve experienced trauma, it can live on in your body and affect your behaviours, particularly in your sense of safety in relationships.

In this post I explain a little more about how trauma affects our body and mind as well as our relationships.

What is Trauma?
Often people associate Trauma with war and natural disasters, but Trauma isn’t about what happened around or to you, its about how you processed an or multiple events and experiences.

Trauma is an internal experience, its not what happened to you but about how you internally processed a lived experience. In this post we’re looking at Trauma that is unresolved.

How is Trauma Processed?

When you’re hungry you get a sensation in your body, which your brain interprets as hunger. You can then respond to hunger by finding something to eat and this internal process is complete; all of the parts of this process can then rest again. The same process happens in response to stress, body sensation, brain reaction, action to find safety, safety needs met everything goes back to rest.

When this process gets interrupted, the need for safety isn’t met and the process remains active. Often people who have unresolved trauma with describe feeling like they get transported back to the original Trauma when similarities to that time occur.

This means their body and brain, when met with similar experiences tries to finish the original process to resolve the Trauma and find safety.

What does this look like in relationships?

Have you ever said something to your partner and they’ve shut down or become reactive, maybe defensive or angry in a way that didn’t seem relative to what you’d said?

This might be a sign that something in what you said or the way you said it has triggered an old feeling of not being safe and that unfinished process has kicked in.

What trauma responses can look like:

• Anger
• Poor sleep
• Stonewalling (not responding or engaging)
• Dissociation – the person seems to glaze over and not be fully present they might not be able to hear or process what you’re saying. It can feel like lost time.
• Defensiveness
• Walking away
• Being defensive
• Jumpiness/jitter/fidgety
• Reacting in a way that seems excessive to the current moment.

Behaviours this might lead to

When navigating life with unresolved trauma, it can leave you wanting to escape the discomfort and this can lead to behaviours such as:

• Addiction
• Affairs/Relationships that breach the boundaries of your primary relationship.
• Rage
• Numbing with food/screens
• Excessive work/exercise/business
• People pleasing
• Ending the relationship during times of stress

How this affects the partner

If you have a partner that responds like the above, it can be hard to feel emotionally connected safe and emotionally in contact with them. This might feel, scary, lonely or confusing. You might feel frustrated or resentful at the lack of connection or rejected by the distance in the relationship.

Trauma and conflict

Trauma can lead to high conflict or zero conflict relationships, depending on how trauma is living inside you, you might be quick to fight and defend or shut down, whether this is not being able to emotionally engage or communicate during conflict, or avoiding it all together by breaking yourself trying to keep the peace.

The Truth about Trauma

We all have some level of unresolved trauma living within us, for some it has a significant impact on our daily lives. For others its only noticeable in response to certain stimuli. Whichever you experience, you’re not broken or damaged, you need and deserve safety and understanding from yourself and others to find new ways forward.

Creating safety

The problem with unresolved trauma is the need for safety didn’t get met, which is why creating a sense of safety is so incredibly important when working with Trauma. There are plenty of ways you can do this, although it might take some practice:

• Notice your body: Everything starts in the body, it is your unconscious taking the time to get to notice how your body feels at different times is one invaluable.
• Notice your partners reactions: Notice their body posture, their breathing, their voice and facial features. Get to know how they respond to certain words, topics etc.
• During conflict or disconnection: invite a break without blame, it might sound like “I feel like things are getting too intense and we need a break. Let’s take some time away from each other and try again when we’re feeling safer.”
• Remember to reconnect: Remember the difficult times aren’t the priority, its how you come back together after that matters most. Reconnect, first maybe with an apology or gratitude for the commitment to try again or simply with a hug and “I love you.”

How marriage counselling can help

Marriage, counselling, Relationship counselling, Couples counselling, whatever you call it, it can help you identify what unfinished process is being triggered and help you create safety together. Counselling can help you navigate Trauma in your relationship to improve managing conflict, communicating clearly and reconnecting emotional or physical intimacy by making space for safety.

Disclaimer

Couples counselling won’t magically fix your trauma, but with the right tools and awareness you and your partner can create safety and new ways to respond when things are hard.

If you’d like support to find safety in yourself and your relationship, you’re welcome to get in touch and book a free call (no strings attached) or book your first session.

Wherever you are in your readiness, I hope you’ve found something useful to take with you today.

Warmly

Kate

 

posted 12.11.2025