Well-spoken and seemingly confident, Jane* came to therapy as a single, 55-year-old woman after a string of “toxic” relationships. In our first session, she wondered why she was attracting men who were unavailable emotionally, and why she felt resentful after spending a few months in a relationship with these men.
As someone who had never sought therapy, Jane was initially guarded about her life and relationships, and I sensed she wanted me to see her as perfect. It was clear to me that she was trying to be overly positive about life and was not fully in touch with her emotions. We continued to build trust in our therapeutic relationship with slow and steady pacing of emotional exploration and Jane confessed that she has struggled to maintain any healthy romantic relationships from her late teens until now.
I asked her about her parents’ relationship when she was growing up. Jane fell silent and, after a while, she shared memories of watching her mother being verbally and physically abused by her father on numerous occasions. She told me he was a good provider for the family but her mother, sister and Jane were treated appallingly, particularly when her father had consumed alcohol. She said although her father’s violent behaviour was widely known within the extended family and neighbourhood, it was rarely spoken about. She never sought help for the domestic violence she experienced and moved out of the family home in her late teens to escape the difficult and abusive environment.
With little self-esteem due to the cruel and belittling comments from her father, she began a relationship with a man 12 years older than her and they became engaged within a few months of her 20th birthday. However, her then fiance began to verbally abuse her in a similar way to her father, commenting on everything from her appearance to the way in which she completed domestic chores. She also discovered that he was cheating on her. Jane said it “crushed her”, even though deep-down she knew the relationship wasn’t a healthy one.
She went on to have several other relationships and she desperately wanted children in her late 20s, but believed bringing children up in an unstable home without two loving parents would be a mistake. She said she never wanted a child to experience what she and her sister did.
After sharing these stories with me, Jane started to connect with her anger and outrage. She wanted to go and tell the world about her father’s behaviour as she desperately wanted to be heard and understood. She said she had felt silenced for far too long. This is quite a typical and understandable reaction from survivors of childhood trauma. Being honest and standing up for one’s truth is encouraged in therapy, but it’s important to understand where you are in your recovery. When a traumatic story is not well integrated yet, our emotions can overwhelm us and can cause raptures in relationships with ourselves and others. It can be further traumatising to share our stories too soon, before it becomes a coherent part of our life narrative.
For a few months, Jane and I worked together to process her trauma and explore how it may have thwarted the possibility of her being in a safe and loving relationship. I encouraged Jane to spend more time understanding her past and exploring who she really was. She spent five weeks in a treatment centre, seeking help for codependency and depression. In group therapy, Jane learned that she was not alone with her story and allowed herself to be supported emotionally by the group members, therapists, and a psychiatrist.
As Dr Peter Levine says: “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” Psychological trauma can come in many forms, and it describes the lasting damage inflicted as a result of distressing events which overwhelm our bodies’ natural ability to resolve and heal from those events.
One form of trauma which research has identified as inflicting particularly serious, long-term damage is known as “complex” trauma, commonly referred to as childhood trauma. Children need to grow up in a predictable, safe and nurturing environment to develop a robust capacity to cope with life’s challenges and to have fulfilling relationships, careers and life. Our sense of self develops in the relationship with our primary caregivers, who are ideally safe, nurturing and reliable. When this process is disrupted by trauma, loss or any less-than-nurturing experience, it can leave us believing that we are unworthy of connection, love and success. So often, we only realise that something has gone wrong when, as adults, we attempt to find loving, happy and functional relationships but can’t.
Jane now understands that she was conditioned as a child to see toxic relationships as almost normal. Many of her relationships were shaped by the trauma she experienced in childhood and in order to form healthy relationships, she needed to heal her past.
Healing from complex trauma takes time and effort. Everyone deserves the support to do so.
*Name has been changed for privacy and the client’s story is an amalgam of several cases
In Australia children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800; adult survivors can seek help at Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International
