EMDR, Trauma, and Relationships
EMDR for Relationship Trauma: Healing Wounds and Rebuilding Trust
Relationships in our lives can bring us so much joy, and so much pain. Some of this just occurs naturally, without our input, just generally the world or outside influences bringing things our way. However, when it comes to pain, discomfort, distress, or conflict, some of it can come from our triggers from past trauma. The relationships in our lives can also impart trauma that doesn’t resolve itself.
When relationship, or relational, trauma occurs, these wounds can be deep and outlast the immediate shock, pain, and discomfort. These wounds can affect future relationships, intimacy, trust, and connection. The lasting effects of trauma can manifest in other ways such as fear of abandonment, struggles with attaching to others, or even total avoidance of relationships or being close to others. In short, they can create a lot of challenges for current or future relationships.
Thankfully, we have a great option to help with this – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. We’ve seen countless examples and numerous clients who have experienced positive results, resolved past trauma, and found better connection, trust, and intimacy in their current relationships. By moving past some of the past trauma, people can feel safer in close connection to others.
What Is Relationship Trauma?
Relationship, or relational, trauma can show up in a lot of different ways, but we can cover the base options. It can come from family, friends, romantic relationships, or other close relationships like a teacher at school. Some of the common sources or types:
Betrayal: Examples include cheating or lying which breaches safety and trust and can leave people feeling vulnerable and deeply wounded.
Emotional Abuse: Examples here include gaslighting, manipulation, or verbal abuse. These can erode confidence, trust, self-esteem, or more. They’re often more subtle in how they show up.
Abandonment or Neglect: This often comes from a parent, guardian, or trusted adult where a child might feel emotionally or physically alone. This can lead to feelings of lower worth or value, insecurity, or unsafety.
Attachment Issues/Insecure Attachment: Generally, we’re supposed to be able to trust our caregivers emotionally, physically and mentally and when we can’t we can struggle with attaching to others in the future.
These examples, especially when repeated or unresolved, can reverberate throughout our lives. For EMDR, we can look at targeting these and the self or world beliefs they bring up such as “I am not good enough”, “I can’t trust others”, “I am worthless”, or numerous others.
How EMDR Helps with Relationship Trauma
EMDR is wonderfully helpful for trauma because it gets at the underlying basis of trauma and helps resolve the cognitive, emotional, and somatic or body pieces of how trauma is stored in our systems. EMDR works at getting the ‘stuck’ trauma ‘unstuck’ so it can be truly resolved in our systems, or at the very least significantly reduced. When applied to relationship traumas, EMDR works in a few important ways:
1. Reprocessing Painful Memories
Relationship trauma, and trauma generally, involves memories that keep their charge emotionally and physically. Even years later, the memory and feelings of betrayal, abandonment, abuse, or whatever else can garner a reaction. EMDR helps by letting you reprocess the memories with your adult brain in a safe and supported environment to reduce or remove the charge they have. So that means present day there’s nothing to trigger because these events from your past become just another memory, most of which fade a lot.
Through the use of bilateral stimulation (BLS), your system will work to reprocess and desensitize the memory. We often start with memories that are a 5+ on a 10 point scale of discomfort and reduce them bit by bit to try to get to 0.
2. Shifting Negative Beliefs
EMDR also helps shift the negative beliefs about self or the world, examples mentioned above including “I am not good enough”, “I can’t trust others”, and “I am worthless”. By reprocessing the memories and the beliefs clients move towards being able to truly believe and feel healthy and fair beliefs such as “I am good enough”, “I can trust others”, and “I am worthwhile”. By working on these, barriers, aversions, or triggers with relationships can be reduced.
By working on the connection of past trauma to these beliefs we can move towards a healthier sense of connecting to others and the safety in that. And this is a truly ‘felt sense’ of it, we’re not talking ourselves in to it each and every time.
3. Reducing Emotional Triggers
After going through relationship trauma people can often get triggered by certain situations, experiences, phrases, or similar things as what caused the trauma in the first place. For example, if past trauma involves deep lying, you may become sensitive to being lied to or assume it’s happening when it’s not. These triggers can make it difficult to engage, trust, and be present in relationships.
EMDR can help reprocess and reduce the emotional stored charge to these triggers. Instead of feeling a 5 out of 10 when you think someone is lying, you’re able to show up in a calm and rational way to both help see things clearly and respond appropriately if lying is actually happening.
4. Rebuilding Trust and Emotional Safety
The rebuilding of trust and emotional safety is very important to having close relationships. If we’re constantly keeping others at arms length it makes successful relationships challenging. Our goal is to help your system recognize that it is no longer in the situation or relationship that led to these beliefs in the first place (although sometimes we also do work with boundaries in the present day to make sure we actually are safe).
As your brain reprocesses the memories, the intensity of fear or anxiety around trust and safety diminishes. Our goal is to help you feel safer being close to others, especially when you have appropriate boundaries and assertiveness present day.
The Power of EMDR for Relationship Healing
For people who have past relationship, or relational, trauma EMDR can offer a wonderful tool to help in their healing journey. By processing the stuck trauma, EMDR can help your system release the emotional, physical, and cognitive charge and barriers to connection. This has a pretty broad application, whether it’s working on trust, intimacy, safety, or a lot of other aspects related to relationships.
By reprocessing the memories and shifting the charge and negative beliefs, clients are able to transform present and future relationships. Although the straight forward goal of EMDR is to reduce the distress with past memories, the bigger goal is to help people live more fulfilled, connected, and happier lives. Humans thrive when they’re able to connect with others and feel safe and appreciated.
Moving Beyond Trauma: Building Healthier Relationships
Healing from past trauma is a journey, a longer one for some than others. While EMDR is a great tool in that journey, our therapists can also help with assertiveness, boundaries, communication, and other aspects of having a healthy relational life in the present day. Whether you’re in a relationship or seeking one, EMDR can be a powerful tool in helping you move past whatever may be holding you back from an authentic and safe connection.
By addressing the root of relational trauma, EMDR helps people reclaim their ability to feel free in connection to others. The goal is not to have to constantly fight feelings of lack of safety, distance, or whatever else, and truly sit in connection.
A Path Toward Healing and Connection
Overall, EMDR offers a generally effective and efficient path towards healing and navigating the complex emotional terrain of relationships. Whether your past trauma is betrayal, abuse, abandonment, or whatever else, EMDR has the possibility of helping. Although we can never make promises on outcomes, we’ve seen a lot of lives and relationships changed through EMDR. We’ve seen clients be able to feel safer and calmer in relationships with others and heal from past wounding.
If you’re feeling trapped by your past and noticing challenged with present day connection, EMDR can help. Feel free to reach out today to learn more about how EMDR can be a great tool in healing.
