I’m a trauma therapist, and the core of my work is relational trauma. Which is a funny thing, because many people who have experienced relational trauma do not identify as trauma survivors. That’s because they survived by finding ways to live with relational harm: they told themselves it was ok, learned it was their job to manage the threat, it was not that big a deal (and/or no one would believe them anyway), that things were unpredictable but pretty amazing in the good times, that it’s probably their fault, that it’s them against the world. In other words, they did what people do in a harmful situation: they adapted to it.
Then, years later, something happens that blows the whole thing open and all those invisible adaptations aren’t looking so adaptive anymore. And so, that’s where our work begins.
People come to me because they notice patterns they can’t change. When a pattern is sticky like that, and won’t respond to reason, we can get curious about it. (Note that curiosity has a different quality to it than ruminating or overthinking). What we often find is that the pattern doesn’t want to change because when it got locked in, it was essential in some way to the person’s survival.
And here’s an important key. People often dismiss relational trauma because it doesn’t appear to involve imminent physical harm. Those people haven’t paid much attention to little kids. Relationship IS survival for a kid. They are entirely dependent on their caregiver for everything they need to survive. If that relationship is rocky, if the parent is ill or unreliable or unpredictable or drunk or fearing for their own life, kids do what they need to do to reassure themselves that they are going to be ok. One big, developmentally normal way of coping is to manage the situation by blaming themselves. Another is to manage the adult by trying to predict or change their unpredictability.
So we become caregivers, hypervigilant mood-monitors, overthinking self-blamers, predictors of the unpredictable.
So when we start therapy for this kind of trauma, our biggest task is to establish a sense of safety and stability with the client. Janina Fisher, trauma therapy expert, says that the stabilization period is 80% of the therapy. As we stabilize, curiosity becomes more accessible, and we start to notice patterns that were previously so essential they were invisible. Our work is not to erase those patterns, even if some of them are hurting the client in the present. They are born of adaptation, so we find ways to present new data so they can revise their plan and adapt again.
Every part of a person is good, because fundamentally, every part of us has just been trying to help us survive. There is an incredible creativity, flexibility, and power in our adaptations. We can re-train them like we are guiding vines up a trellis. It’s a thing of beauty!