The Trauma of Broken Relationships in Families
Humans have all kinds of physical and emotional needs. When we are born, the ability to have those needs met determines our relationship with ourselves, our family, our community, and the world around us.
Many families prioritize physical needs over emotional ones. This is understandable because unmet physical needs can lead to immediate instability or danger. As a result, some caregivers tend to ensure that their children are clothed, fed, housed, and educated, while unintentionally neglecting their emotional needs for connection, validation, and belonging.
When a child grows up in an environment where they do not feel they are consistently welcomed, understood, or emotionally safe within their family system, relationship trauma can develop. Relationship Trauma is a wound that forms when there is not consistent safety with others. Relationship trauma can form in childhood or adulthood relationship dynamics.
Some individuals grow up in families where emotional connection is inconsistent or limited. Others may experience relational environments where one person’s needs or perspectives dominate the relationship.
Often, these dynamics form because of the parents’ or caregivers’ own emotional landscape and unhealed traumas. When people become parents or care for children before they themselves have addressed their own emotional needs, these dynamics can be damaging to the next generation.
The Impact of Relational Trauma on the Nervous System
When belonging feels uncertain, the nervous system interprets it as a threat to survival.
Our nervous systems are the primary communication and control network in our bodies. It works by sending electrical and chemical signals between the brain, spinal cord, and body. One of the functions of our nervous system is to keep us safe in our environment. As such, it constantly scans for threats or dangers.
Once danger is perceived, even if it’s not an imminent threat, the Nervous System activates and functions to take protective action through the Sympathetic Nervous system. It does so by – confronting the threat (fight), escaping the threat (flight), trying to appease the threat (fawn), or shutting down or doing nothing, hoping that the danger will pass (freeze). These processes are automatic survival strategies, not conscious decisions. Once the threat is neutralized, the nervous system is expected to enter a calming and restorative state where heart rate slows, breathing deepens, muscles relax, and digestion restarts. This is called the Parasympathetic Nervous System.
However, for many, safety is not re-established due to constant threats of rejection, physical harm, isolation, and criticism within familial relationships.
In families where emotional needs are not prioritized, countless unspoken rules exist that cannot be fully met, yet children and sometimes adults are ridiculed for not meeting these vague expectations. In other words, acceptance is based on compliance, and the rules of compliance are often changed without notice, based on the internal whim of one or more individuals. Growing up in an environment like this is harmful because the environment is constantly in a state of threat without the opportunity for safety. This is where the trauma occurs. When physical or emotional needs go unmet, the nervous system may not get an opportunity to recover.
The impact of these rules and expectations does a world of harm and creates a sense of hypervigilance where every outward behavior is internally analyzed and shifted based on the environment.
Why this matters
For humans, connection is directly connected to safety. When humans were nomadic and hunter-gatherers, the community played a major role in safety. When we belonged to a group and were faced with a threat to our lives, our chances of survival increased drastically. Because there were others around and we were supported, we were safe. If we were alone and faced with the same threat, our chances of survival weren’t as high as when we were a part of the group. It is because of this that humans adapted to being in community to help protect each other from danger.
Imagine this: you are out searching for food and approach a threat like a lion or another person who does not belong to your group. You would likely be able to fight off and survive the threat if there were people around you supporting you and helping you do so. If you were alone, you may not be so lucky.
This is why safe relationships matter. The people we’re connected to are our first barometers of safety. Children knowing that they are going to be kept safe physically and emotionally is key to healthy development and healthy relationships with not only our family, but our community, and the larger world. When relational or belonging needs aren’t met, children learn the message – “the world isn’t safe, and I need to protect myself.”
Why this matters
For humans, connection is directly connected to safety. When humans were nomadic and hunter-gatherers, the community played a major role in safety. When we belonged to a group and were faced with a threat to our lives, our chances of survival increased drastically. Because there were others around and we were supported, we were safe. If we were alone and faced with the same threat, our chances of survival weren’t as high as when we were a part of the group. It is because of this that humans adapted to being in community to help protect each other from danger.
Imagine this: you are out searching for food and approach a threat like a lion or another person who does not belong to your group. You would likely be able to fight off and survive the threat if there were people around you supporting you and helping you do so. If you were alone, you may not be so lucky.
This is why safe relationships matter. The people we’re connected to are our first barometers of safety. Children knowing that they are going to be kept safe physically and emotionally is key to healthy development and healthy relationships with not only our family, but our community, and the larger world. When relational or belonging needs aren’t met, children learn the message – “the world isn’t safe, and I need to protect myself.”
How to Heal
Healing means re-establishing safety within relationships, practicing self-care and self-compassion, noticing patterns that show up in distress, setting boundaries, challenging negative thoughts and beliefs about oneself, regulating, and healing the nervous system. In many cases, therapy can help uncover patterns learned in childhood impacting your relationships currently.
This is the part that many don’t like but need to hear; healing means doing the thing – even when it’s scary, and your nervous system wants to run and hide. It means learning how to analyze and sit with what’s happening internally, regulating, and then regulating some more while doing the thing, applying all that you’ve learned. Sometimes regulation needs to occur as you are having an active disagreement with a friend or a spouse; at times we must remind ourselves that the person in front of us is not the one who caused the harm. It often takes active intervention to break us out of the survival cycle. If we let the thoughts or emotions run without intercession, we will find ourselves highly activated and likely unable to control our impulses to fight, run, people please, hide, or shut down.
Rebuilding relationships after one has been harmed is a difficult endeavor. Many times, we will experience the same patterns gained while living in harm's way. We will run away from conflict because we don’t want to be faced with the same consequences of not being in compliance with what we think the other person needs us to be. It is the avoidance of relationships altogether or people-pleasing behaviors that lead us to being unfulfilled within our relationships. If we allow the trauma of our past to dictate how we show up and interact with the world, it will, because the job of our nervous system is to keep us safe from harm in all forms.
What’s Next
Healing from relational trauma often involves exploring the patterns that shaped early relationships and learning new ways of experiencing connection.
If you find yourself recognizing these patterns in your own life, working with a therapist can be a supportive space to better understand your experiences and begin building relationships that feel more secure and aligned.
If you are ready to start exploring these patterns in your own life, book a free consultation today.
Words and Phrases to Know
Community – the group of people to which you belong. This could be biological or chosen family, faith-based organizations, social groups, and other organizations where people gather and have some form of connection to one another.
Emotional Needs – The essential psychological requirement of feeling loved, safe, welcomed, and accepted.
Fawn – a nervous system survival strategy characterized by people-pleasing, appeasing, and complying with others to avoid conflict and maintain safety.
Family System – an emotional unit where members are intensely interconnected, functioning as a complex, interdependent whole rather than merely a collection of individuals.
Fight – Apart of the Sympathetic Nervous System: an automatic this state functions to activate the body and prepare to fight off any perceived threat. It does so by releasing adrenaline and cortisol. Physical changes include increased heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and heightened alertness.
Flight – Apart of the Sympathetic Nervous System: an automatic this state functions to activate the body to escape immediate perceived danger. Triggered by the hypothalamus, it floods the body with hormones necessary to mobilize the body.
Freeze – an involuntary survival mechanism activated when facing overwhelming danger where fight-or-flight feels impossible, causing the body to immobilize, go numb, or dissociate.
Hypervigilance – an enhanced, excessive state of sensory sensitivity and constant alertness to potential threats, often driven by a dysregulated nervous system.
Parasympathetic Nervous System – a network of nerves that relaxes your body after periods of stress or danger. It also helps run life-sustaining processes, like digestion, during times when you feel safe and relaxed.
Physical Needs – The essential biological requirements for human survival and well-being.
Relationship Trauma – profound, long-lasting emotional harm occurring within close relationships, typically from caregivers or partners who are supposed to provide safety.
Sympathetic Nervous System – a component of the autonomic nervous system that prepares the body for "fight or flight" responses, increasing heart rate, breathing, and pupil size while inhibiting digestion during stress.
Sources
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Introduction to the eight concepts. The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family. (n.d.). https://www.thebowencenter.org/introduction-eight-concepts
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Sussex Publishers. (n.d.). Making sense of complex relational trauma. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-the-whole-beautiful/202205/making-sense-complex-relational-trauma
WebMD. (n.d.-a). Acute stress response: Fight, Flight, freeze, and Fawn. WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-does-fight-flight-freeze-fawn-mean
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