Relationships are so important to us as people. We find someone who we are attracted to, we fall in love, and we hope that they will be with us forever. We try so hard to make it work that we tolerate unthinkable events, and sometimes have our hearts broken when we experience the disappointment of not being able to make it work.
In a previous post I discussed a little bit about soul mates and twin flames. One of the ideas I touched on was that we meet these people and we rarely stay with them for a life time. This often happens because of the intensity of these types of relationships, and something I like to refer to as the Trauma-Trust Trigger.
In order to facilitate an understanding for you of the trauma-trust trigger, we need to understand the subconscious actions that are occurring when we are attracted to someone. When we look at the way in which we become attracted to someone we often experience a “pull” or an “urge” to be with this person. Where do you think, does this attraction come from?
I think of attraction starting on an energetic level. If you follow the theories of Barbara Brennan, she discusses how when we walk into a room our energy bodies create an arc of energy to everyone in the room. This arc is testing the energy of everyone else in the room, and in a matter of seconds we know everyone who is compatible with us.
Information is exchanged between energy bodies, and we are completely unaware of this happening. We do experience the culmination of that information that’s collected in our feelings towards someone. If our energy tests that someone is a good match for us then we will be drawn to them for reasons we cannot cognitively identify. If they are not a good match for us we will get a bad “vibe” or a feeling about them.
This mechanism works entirely through the subconscious mind. As information about our environment comes through our energy field, it is first perceived in the central nervous system, then it is interpreted by the subconscious mind. This interpretation is then passed along to other body systems and manifests through a method that our consciousness can best use.
Most of us lack the proper training, or self trust, to interpret this information in a way that makes logical sense to us, so often these experiences get confused. We add meanings to these experiences that tend to align with our desires about what we want from our lives. We always see in a situation what we expect to see, and through this we tend to receive what we put out into the world around us.
So now we’ve walked into a dinner party, we’ve exchanged energy information with everyone in the room, we have found the one person we feel the strongest pull to, and we’ve asked them if we can get them a drink. The night has gone on, the feeling is only growing stronger, and we are certain we would like to get to know this person better.
Flash forward a couple months and we have been seeing this person all along. We spend every day talking to them, we’re going out on dates, maybe they’re even coming over to stay at our house for a few days at a time. Things are going pretty well. We’re excited about being in love, or falling in love. We’re so interested in all the little details about them. We still may not know why we like this person so much, but they are satisfying something in us, and we intend to just enjoy it as often as we can.
A few months later, there is a tension building between you. Little things you were once drawn to have started to irritate something in you. You are noticing certain behaviors in them and you are telling yourself stories about what those behaviors must mean. Those behaviors mean that they are up to no good. Those behaviors mean they are being unfaithful. Those behaviors mean they are unstable and you should say something about those behaviors.
These beliefs that you are experiencing about the other person’s behavior are based on insecurities. These insecurities are built upon unhealed parts of yourself that have been lying dormant for years, possibly since your childhood, and they are making themselves known now. They manifest as projections onto your partner, and those projections carry all the ill intent that lives within your unhealed past traumas.
When these insecurities and fears begin to make themselves known, this means you are experiencing a process called “offering up”. Your mind body is offering up an old trauma that needs to be healed. It is offering up in this moment because subconsciously your mind knows that the situation you are in is a place where it can be healed.
When we couple, when we meet someone that we think we want to be in a relationship with, we choose them because there is a part of us that recognizes that that person can help us to heal a trauma. Remember the information exchange that happens between our energy fields when we meet someone? Part of that information is about whether or not this person has the necessary tools to help us heal old unprocessed wounds. We choose these people because our trauma resonates with an experience or a trauma they themselves have experienced. We couple because we are seeking healing in one another.
This situation is very tricky, requires patience, and needs to be handled with compassionate understanding. There is a huge potential for this situation to become volatile if handled improperly. Improper handling of this process is the reason why people fall into a pattern of ceaseless toxicity and ultimately end in divorce. This is why I am sharing this information with you now, because this is something that all of us fail at.
Conversely, if this situation is handled appropriately it can deepen the bond between two people and increase the love that is shared between them. Further more, you can be healed through this process and this is how a relationship can enhance and enrich your life.
So what makes this situation so volatile? Well an interesting part about how we work is that trauma and trust exist in the same part of the mind-body. This makes the process of offering up so difficult to navigate. When someone’s trauma shows up it can feel violating for the person experiencing it. This is part of them that is raw, tender and unhealed. If it’s coming up then they are likely experiencing a lot of fear with it. This can put them in a defensive posture.
If you add this to the fact that we are drawn to each other along the axis of our trauma, then there’s a high potential that what they are releasing is relevant to something we have or are experiencing. This can be perceived as our partner attacking us. It’s rare that they actually are, but more than likely it will feel that way. This is where we have to make a conscious choice. Do we want to seize this moment as an opportunity for healing, or are we going to become reactive and further traumatize our partner?
So we need to remember, trauma and trust, trauma and trust. They are linked in our brains. If we experience a trauma, and we are met with trauma, the trauma exacerbates and resentment sets in. If we bring this dynamic into our relationship, then this is how we create toxicity. Depending on how deep the trauma, this toxicity can grow and become an abusive pattern, or just be the end of the relationship.
So how do we respond to a rising trauma with trust? What exactly does that mean? When our partners say something to us that feels threatening, our knee-jerk reaction could be to become defensive and throw back something that threatens the other person. This is a pattern where no one wins. This situation will continue to inflate until it reaches an apex, leaving a path of dismembered emotions along the way. This is meeting trauma with trauma.
When we meet trauma with trust, we are trusting the process of them offering up their trauma, trusting that our partners love and care about us. They would not be attacking us if this were true. So if we are meeting trauma with trust we are are being patient while they offer up. We hold space for them to complete the cycle of what they are experiencing. We stop ourselves from taking anything that is being said personally, and we do not retaliate. We hear them, we let them unpack what they are experiencing, and we only interact to keep the flow going.
In this process, we do not add anything to the conversation. We do not add any ideas, thoughts, or god help you any criticisms. We can just sit there silently, accept that this ejection has nothing to do with us, and understand that they are trying to complete a trauma. When they have completed the trauma we can share our own.
When we share our own trauma back we do not compete to see who has the biggest scars. We share to show respect to vulnerability. We honor the space that was created in this situation to drag everything out of our closets. Once we get everything out in the open maybe we can see that we are capable of helping the other complete their trauma so we can release it.
In the arms of vulnerability sleeps the infant of intimacy. True intimacy can occur when we bare everything inside of us and we see that we have a space that is safe and sacred. Our relationship with one another will deepen. Over time, as we continue to process our trauma-trust triggers, we can develop a relationship that is so steeped in trust that it is unbreakable.
If you are reading this, and you have already crossed the trauma-trust trigger threshold in your present relationship, do not fear, you can still redeem yourself. The trouble is however, that in each time the trauma-trust trigger has been activated, and you have failed to meet the situation with trust, you have compounded that trauma. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to reverse the toxicity in the relationship, it means you’ve managed to dig yourself deeper. It’s always worth it as long as you’re willing to do the work. If it feels like it’s too much for you and your partner to do on your own, there are many options for help to resurrect and save the relationship. There is couples counseling, conflict resolution classes, relationship coaching. There is so much that can be done. You both have to be in agreement, that the relationship is worth saving.
The trauma-trust trigger is an unavoidable component of a relationship. In fact it’s the entire reason why we get together with anyone in the first place. So the key here is acceptance. If you accept it as an important component of a relationship, rather than do everything you can to avoid it, you can help each other complete your trauma and move forward into a life that is further enriched by the depth of this relationship. Understand that suffering is on the path to healing, and that our place isn’t to help each other avoid confronting our fears, insecurities and suffering, but to facilitate a safe space where we can offer it up to resolution. How can you do better in your future relationships, to ensure that an offering up process is greeted with perfect love and perfect trust, and does not descend into a pattern of toxicity?
Being aware of this pattern as well as the toxic patterns that exist in our own psyche can be huge at helping us to navigate through the hard times in any relationship. How we handle the tough times says a great deal about our willingness to work towards having better relationships, and being our best selves. Any relationship, if allowed to develop properly, can help us to grow as people. Helping us to develop a greater sense of self, more empathy towards those we love, and more compassion for all those we encounter. All we need, is trust.
Artwork by: Christopher Foulkes c-knox@live.com
Nightwing Healing Arts 