Does Having Trauma Make It Harder to Date or Be in a Relationship?

Short answer, it definitely can. To start off, there are different types of trauma. The APA’s definition of “trauma” is “Any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.” Then there is “Complex Trauma” which The National Child Traumatic Stress Network defines as, “Complex trauma describes both children’s exposure to multiple traumatic events—often of an invasive, interpersonal nature—and the wide-ranging, long-term effects of this exposure. These events are severe and pervasive, such as abuse or profound neglect. Lastly, there is Developmental Trauma which PubMed Central defines as, “Developmental trauma” is the psychological and neurobiological damage that occurs when a child is exposed to chronic, repeated trauma (such as abuse, neglect, or abandonment) during critical developmental years. It fundamentally disrupts a child’s sense of safety, secure attachment, and ability to self-regulate.”

All this to say more simply, it depends on the type of trauma a person has, which then can impact their ability to participate in healthy dating and relationships.  When we experience trauma, depending on how we internalize it, the trauma can skew our perspective and how we see the world. Trauma can cause people to view the world as unsafe and cause hypervigilance. For many people, it can cause overthinking, shame, highly critical of self and behavior, or seeking unhealthy relationships that their nervous system sees as “normal” since they resemble earlier attachment patterns. Trauma responses can also look like: shutting down, unable to stay calm/regulated while addressing conflict, catastrophizing thoughts and situations, etc.

Is all hope lost if you have trauma and want to be in a healthy relationship? Absolutely not! Therapy is a process, and it can be hard to go deep and process traumatic experiences, but coming out on the other side with some relief, is worth it. Not only will that improve your dating and relationship experience, it can positively impact your entire worldview with all types of relationships and your relationship with yourself. These days, trauma is more widely discussed and more treatment modalities are available that are not necessarily just reliving the trauma and being re-traumatized which can sometimes happen in traditional talk-therapy.

A few of the modalities I recommend for addressing trauma in therapy (if appropriate for each individual client which you would discuss with your therapist) are EMDR, DBR, Neurofeedback, and more. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which allows people to process trauma’s with one foot in the present and one foot in the past, utilizing bilateral stimulation, which helps to desensitize traumas and reprocess them, which can give the person some space from what occurred. Depending on the types of trauma, this could be months of treatment or years, each person is different. EMDR can also be used for one-time traumatic events which can be processed quicker if not linked to any childhood trauma. Another type of therapy is DBR, which stands for Deep Brain Reorienting; this type of therapy deals with addressing the shock and deep affect the body and brainstem can store before the frontal lobe even realizes a trauma is occurring.

The last type of therapy I will be discussing is Neurofeedback. Neurofeedback can be utilized to address Developmental trauma and impacts of other trauma on a person’s brain and behavior. Neurofeedback training can help people create new neural pathways for more efficient ways for the brain to work, which can help with regulation, attention, concentration, overthinking, self-criticism, reduce body tension, etc.

I hear many people say, well I need to heal first before I get in a healthy relationship or I won’t be able to enjoy it or see it for what it is. Some of that may be true, but what people don’t realize is that a lot of the healing comes while in a relationship with a securely attached partner, in a healthy relationship. Yes, we should actively be in therapy trying to work through the trauma that is triggering you current day, while also navigating this healthier experience, so that eventually and over-time you will be able to accept it and see it for what it is. We don’t have to wait, but we do need to acknowledge there are things to be worked through, and to start addressing them in a safe, professional therapeutic setting.