How To Start Healing From Relationship Trauma

Abusive relationships can take a toll on mental and physical stress, often causing characteristic features associated with traumatic stress. The traumatic stress one may experience in an abusive relationship can be as harmful as any traumatic experience. It may seriously impact how a person thinks, behaves, and feels in future relationships. While relationship trauma can be harmful and debilitating, it can also be possible to heal from the experience and find healthier love. 

What is trauma from a relationship?

Trauma from past relationships can take various forms, but three types of traumatic exposure are common, including the following: 

• Emotional manipulation, insults, or critical behavior against a partner 
• Attempts to control who someone can interact with or what they can do 
• Physical or sexual abuse or harm 

The above behaviors may substantially impact your ability to move on from a relationship. After the relationship ends, your support network might remind you that you are free to pursue a happy, healthy relationship. However, your thoughts might not align so closely with theirs. You might believe you are unworthy of a happy relationship or fearful that a new partner might treat you like your previous one. 

In some cases, the healing process can become complicated, and it may be difficult to shake the negative feelings and thoughts associated with your previous partner. As with other trauma sources, a traumatic relationship can embed itself in your thought process and distort your self-worth or personal security. In some cases, a person might develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

What are the symptoms of PTSD?  

PTSD refers to a cluster of symptoms that may occur following a traumatic event. While cases of PTSD can look different and vary from person to person, to be diagnosed, a person must meet criteria from five different categories: 

• Stressor symptoms refer to traumatic events. To meet criteria in this category, a person must have directly experienced trauma, witnessed a traumatic occurrence, learned about a close friend or family member experiencing trauma, or be indirectly exposed to distressing details of a trauma-inducing event. 
• Intrusive symptoms refer to involuntary thoughts associated with a traumatic event. Flashbacks, nightmares, and dissociative events are intrusion symptoms. A person might also experience significant psychological distress when reminded of their traumatic exposure.
• Avoidance symptoms refer to a person’s effort to avoid distressing memories or reminders of the trauma or attempts to avoid people, places, conversations, objects, or concepts associated with the event. 
• Mood symptoms refer to the negative alteration in mood and thoughts often seen after exposure to trauma. A person may experience negative thoughts, distorted cognition, a loss of interest in enjoyable activities, or difficulty expressing positive emotions. 
• Reactivity symptoms refer to changes in reactivity that occur following trauma. A person might become more irritable, reckless, paranoid, or easily startled. 

How does PTSD look different after a traumatic relationship?

Researchers and clinicians have studied certain PTSD symptoms that often occur after a person leaves a traumatic relationship. Relationship PTSD might include flashbacks, negativity, heightened reactivity, and unwanted thoughts like the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. However, researchers noted that those who have been exposed to extreme traumatic stress in a relationship differ from those with traditional PTSD in that they did not display avoidance symptoms. 

Because avoidance is a characteristic feature of PTSD, some researchers called for a new diagnosis that better conceptualizes how trauma presents after a relationship. Some mental health professionals began using the term “post-traumatic relationship syndrome” to describe how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors may shift after a traumatic relationship. Post-traumatic relationship syndrome (PTRS) is not a formal mental health diagnosis. Still, many in the mental health community use the term to classify the unique features of traumatic stress symptoms that occur following trauma in an intimate relationship. 

Traumatic relationship syndrome is characterized by difficulty avoiding memories of the traumatic relationship or your past abusive partner. Those with PTSD can become numb to their distress to cope with trauma, but those with PTRS may not. They may try to navigate their feelings by overusing emotional coping strategies, such as reframing the situation, journaling, or discussing the trauma with others. In some circumstances, those coping strategies are a way to reduce emotional distress. However, in the case of trauma, they may keep the traumatic experience fresh in a person’s mind. 

How to start healing from a traumatic relationship

Recovering from a trauma can be a time-consuming and an involved process. The nature of trauma can make it difficult to face what is causing your distress proactively. However, with time, improvement is often possible. Below are a few strategies to help you start your healing journey.  

Give yourself a break from relationships

Although rebound relationships aren’t necessarily unhealthy, entering a new relationship before your trauma is under control may do more harm than good. Try to allow yourself time to fully recover from your traumatic exposure. Not doing so might make your next relationship more unstable or chaotic, as your feelings and thoughts from your traumatic relationship may interfere with how you behave. 

Trauma can make a person highly reactive to external stimuli that remind them of their traumatic exposure, which may make a new relationship difficult as you encounter themes that remind you of past relationships. 

Cultivate a safe environment

It can be essential to feel safe and secure during your recovery. If you don’t have an environment where you are safe from your former partner, experts at the National Domestic Violence Hotline may be able to offer support and resources. Once you have a place where you are physically safe, try to make that space emotionally safe, as well. Consider hanging up extra pictures of loved ones and reminders of happy memories. These reminders may help you foster positivity and maintain your self-worth while recovering. 

Martial your support network

It may be beneficial to reach out to friends, family, or other safe people to aid in your recovery. You don’t have to tell them all the details of your trauma, and you can also elect not to share any details. 

While sharing and receiving direct support may be helpful, it may also reopen wounds or worsen symptoms through re-exposure. Evidence suggests that positive social interactions are one of the most effective ways to build resilience against stress, and it is possible that hanging out with people whose company you enjoy can be helpful, even if you do not process traumatic events.   

Practice self-care 

Trauma can make basic self-care challenging, and comorbid conditions like depression or anxiety can also interfere. If you’re struggling with trauma or any other mental concern, it may be beneficial to focus on maintaining basic self-care. Some experts recommend focusing first on getting enough sleep, eating a healthy diet, and exercising regularly. Keeping up on those three self-care domains may help you better process and recover from your trauma while keeping some adverse effects at bay. 

Ask for professional help 

If you’ve tried to move past your traumatic relationship and have struggled to do so, or if you notice the effects of PTRS or PTSD, consider reaching out to a mental health professional. Meeting with a therapist or other professional is often one of the most effective ways to cope with trauma. Traumatic exposure can be complex to manage, and having outside guidance from an expert may be helpful. 

If you struggle to attend in-person therapy, you’re not alone. Some people have found success accessing therapeutic services remotely. Online therapy through a platform like BetterHelp can offer flexibility and control over your therapy process, giving you the opportunity to attend therapy from home and get matched from a database of over 30,000 therapists based on your needs, preferences, and location. Online therapists use the same evidence-based techniques as face-to-face therapists, such as brief trauma-focused therapy. 

The boom in online therapy patients in recent years has spurred a large wave of research examining its effectiveness. Not everyone in the therapy community was convinced that online therapy would work well, but evidence suggests it can be as effective as traditional therapy.

Takeaway

An abusive romantic relationship can cause trauma symptoms like any other traumatic event. Research into trauma survivors revealed that those who leave a traumatic relationship often experience symptoms aligned with PTSD, with one notable exception. 

PTSD is often characterized by avoidance—Those traumatized by a former romantic partner may not exhibit that avoidance and may have symptoms a therapist can consider outside of a traditional PTSD diagnosis. For support with your symptoms or challenges, consider reaching out to a mental health professional online or in your area.