A toxic relationship can be a form of trauma, but there is a great chance that if you keep finding yourself in unhealthy relationships then the issue is some unresolved pain that has produced trauma in your life. As a result of this trauma, your ability to attract or be attracted to healthy men becomes low. Your ability to let go of a relationship that is not good for you becomes harder, and you find yourself in this cycle of attracting the same men. Let’s understand trauma and the impacts it has on relationships.
Trauma causes a person’s body to always be on defense and the body cannot detect what is safe or unsafe, even its own body. Trauma can cause the body to attack itself. A person will feel unsafe in their own bodies because the past is still alive. The body sends instinctive warnings that are uncomfortable to control fight/flight.
Trauma Effects on the Brain
VVC “smart vagus” is the area of the brain responsible for regulating fight/flight responses causing a person to self-soothe and be calm. Trauma affects this area of the brain causing a person to become zombie-like and disassociate. In an attempt to turn off feelings and emotions that define terror, a person who has experienced trauma turns off those areas of the brain that defines terror. Yet those areas of the brain are responsible for an array of emotions that are for self-awareness. This is why after going through a bad breakup women may feel lost.
Trauma causes you to not trust your gut
The effect of trauma causes a person to erase awareness and nurture desires or imagination. Trauma shuts down the inner compass and turns on the need to imagine something better. You become an expert at ignoring your gut feelings and numbing the reality of relationships. This shows up as knowing a man is wrong for you, but you hold onto the small possibility or desire for a person to change. You learn to hide from yourself, hide from reality. Ignoring your body’s messages is the inability to detect what is truly dangerous or harmful versus what is safe and nourishing. So, a person who experienced trauma often finds themselves in the same situations and the same relationships. Hence “I keep attracting the same type of men”.
I am attracted to bad guys
Reenactment or repeating the same habits is a way to regain control over a situation. Strong emotions like fear can block pain. So, the re-exposure to stress can cause relief from anxiety. The fight/flight response makes a person who has been traumatized energized. Panic and rage become preferable. Fear and pain can become enjoyable, where your body transfers these emotions to pleasure, hence the feeling that you love the person more after a fight, or the I am attracted to bad guys. Here is why, you learn to relate anxiety and pain with love and sexual excitement. When you try to leave the relationship your body takes over, you know what they are doing is wrong, but your body says this is our version of love. So you learn to associate love with abuse.
If you grew up in a safe and loving home, getting tied up with a relationship that is the opposite of safe will be outrageous and will cause you to immediately step away. “This is not familiar; this does not feel like home”. If you are a woman who has experienced trauma, then your senses are off; your inner map is marked with contempt and humiliation so you will hesitate to oppose when you are being mistreated. This shows up as “I have a hard time telling him no”, “I don’t know how to let go of this relationship”, “I want to leave, but it feels better to stay”.
Solutions
1. Self-Regulation– Restructure your inner map system by practicing meditating on the word of God and breathing techniques. Meditation triggers the MPFC of the brain the area that helps with decision making, including conflict monitoring, and error detection. Through meditation you learn to have a good relationship with your body or else you’ll rely on external regulations such as (drugs, alcohol, medication, constant reassurance, constant compliance with others, or in other words people-pleasing). But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding its fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither, and who prospers in all he does. Psalms 1:2-3 BSB
2. Feel– Allow yourself to feel the emotions produced by a trigger without suppressing it. Identify your feelings. Learn to be friends with your emotions versus suppressing the energy produced by triggers from the past. Knowing what we feel is the beginning of understanding why we feel that way. Do activities that allow you to feel such as massages, and exercises.
3. Center Yourself to the Now – We need to see and observe what’s real and what is not real. Observe what’s around us and separate it from imagination. When you feel yourself imagining the past including past relationships gently change your mind to your now. 8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8 NIV Do things to make your now more enjoyable such as starting a new hobby, hanging out more with a safe friend, or joining an interest group.
A healthy relationships starts with you. If you find yourself making the same mistakes in relationships then it’s time to do some self-reflection and break the pattern, so that you can experience love that lasts. I am cheering for you!
Ready to jumpstart your healing? Checkout my accelerated masterclass Breakup to Breakthrough.
