A woman who suffered relationship trauma forming new relationships in a support group.

How Relationship Trauma Affects Your Mental Health

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Relationship trauma, especially in your youth, can severely disrupt your well-being and ability to form new relationships. Through adulthood, it can affect your emotional responses and potentially lead to trust issues, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or mental health conditions.

When a child or adolescent goes through toxic relationships during their formative years, it can affect them throughout their entire life if not addressed.

With the right coping strategies and professional help, it is possible to overcome the traumatic experiences caused by toxic relationships.

What Is Relationship Trauma?

Relationship trauma refers to traumatic events or experiences caused by someone you have an intimate relationship with. This isn’t limited to romantic relationships – it can occur between you and any of your loved ones, including friends and family members. For example, relationship trauma stemming from youth is commonly associated with parents or guardians.

There is no specific mental health condition for trauma caused by abusive relationships listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMR) as of yet. Some mental health professionals suggest introducing post-traumatic relationship syndrome (PTRS) as a new diagnosis. Complex PTSD (CPTSD) has also been suggested, which differs from PTSD. CPTSD is caused by chronic or prolonged traumatic experiences rather than a single traumatic event. Both diagnoses need more research and approval before they can be added to the DSMR.

What Causes Relationship Trauma?

Relationship trauma stems from having a partner, family member, caregiver, or even friend that subjects you to traumatic experiences and abuse. It’s important to note that physical abuse is not the only kind of abuse that can cause trauma; verbal and emotional abuse can be just as damaging, especially during formative years.

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse includes any physical harm or force that an abusive partner or family member subjects you to, such as:

    • Punching
    • Slapping
    • Kicking
    • Choking
    • Shoving
    • Pinching
    • Grabbing
    • Shaking
    • Restraining

If you or a loved one are in danger, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline also offers confidential help 24/7. To reach them, call 800-799-7233 or text 88788.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse includes any non-consensual sexual contact or behavior. This can include:

    • Rape
    • Coerced sex or nudity
    • Unwanted contact
    • Covert photography or videoing
    • Unsolicited sexual images or stimuli
    • Sexual cyber-harassment

Mental and Emotional Abuse

It can be harder to identify and detect mental and emotional abuse since they don’t involve physical behaviors or visual signs. An abusive partner or family member may use this kind of abuse to frighten or gain control.

Insults and Humiliation

Your partner or family member calls you cruel or insulting names, puts you down, or shames you in front of others.

Dismissiveness, Neglect, and Abandonment

Your partner or caregiver consistently dismisses your feelings, neglects your well-being, repeatedly threatens to abandon you, or abandons you when you are in need.

Stonewalling

Your partner intentionally ignores and emotionally withdraws from you as a form of punishment; it often occurs when you are distressed.

Gaslighting

Your partner or loved one makes you doubt your own perception of reality and judgment by denying or distorting events, making you feel crazy, overly sensitive, or shifting blame onto you.

Emotional Manipulation

This type of abuse includes your partner guilt-tripping or love bombing you, exploiting your insecurities, or being passive-aggressive.

Excessive Jealousy and Control

Your partner has disproportionate emotional responses when you pay attention to others. They constantly monitor where you are or regularly accuse you of cheating and lying.

Damaging Property

When your partner punches holes in walls or breaks things to intimidate you or express anger, it’s a form of emotional abuse. However, this often escalates to physical abuse. If they take out their anger by damaging your property, it can also be a form of financial abuse.

Financial Abuse

Financial abuse can also be harder to detect. Common methods of financial abuse include:

      • Withholding money
      • Lying about joint assets
      • Preventing you from maintaining a job/income
      • Forcing you to sign financial documents or forging your signature
      • Coerced debt
      • Refusing to pay their share of bills or utilities

Developing Relationship PTSD and Other Conditions

Severe or prolonged relationship trauma, especially when you are young, can lead to developing or contributing to a mental health condition.

Depression and anxiety are the most common disorders that develop from trauma. After depression and anxiety, PTSD is the most common disorder associated with having suffered relationship trauma. Many of the ways that relationship trauma affects your mental health are also PTSD symptoms. Additionally, relationship trauma, especially when you experience it early in life, can also contribute to the development of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

How Relationship Trauma Affects Your Mental Health

When a past relationship with an intimate partner or caregiver causes trauma, it can severely impact your mental well-being.

Low Self-Esteem

Long-term exposure to physical, emotional, and verbal abuse from a partner can diminish your self-worth over time.

Feelings of Guilt or Shame

You may feel that the abuse was somehow your fault, especially if your intimate partners or family members subjected you to gaslighting. Those who experience feelings of guilt from past relationships may become overly apologetic or people-please to prevent future abuse or abandonment.

Increased Irritability and Emotional Responses

You may feel more irritable, angry, or distressed by common stressors or conflict, especially if they trigger memories of traumatic experiences.

Loss of Trust in Others

You may become suspicious of people in general, doubting their intentions or suspecting that new people in your life will abuse you in the same way.

Trauma Bonding

Many people have come to use the term “trauma bond” to mean connecting with someone by discussing past trauma together. In the field of psychiatry, however, trauma bonds are a deep attachment you feel for your partner or family member as a result of the abuse that makes it hard for you to leave the situation.

When you have a trauma bond, you may be unable to leave the relationship, make excuses for the person who abused you, and even find yourself missing them or wanting to reach out after you have left the relationship.

Trauma bonds form because the cycle of abuse causes you to feel anxiety and fear when things are bad, and then a release of positive chemicals and emotions when things are better – which can become addictive over time. Stockholm syndrome is a common term that describes an extreme trauma bond.

Fear, Distress, and Anxiety

You may feel afraid when you encounter triggers that remind you of previous abuse, including developing new relationships with friends or intimate partners. You may also have a fear of abandonment that makes you overly fearful of losing new partners.

Flashbacks

You may experience intrusive symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, and unwanted thoughts related to the traumatic experiences you went through.

Obsessive Intrusive Thoughts

You may find yourself thinking obsessively about the abusive relationship or even new healthy relationships.

These thoughts may involve past arguments or abuse, where you try to pinpoint what you did wrong and how to avoid making the same mistake in the future. You may have intrusive thoughts that new partners will leave you or obsessively search for red flags in new relationships.

How Adolescent Relationship Trauma Shapes Attachment

Since relationship trauma can cause you to lose trust in others and fear intimacy, forming new, healthy relationships can be difficult.

The relationships between primary caregivers or family members and children are supposed to show how a relationship should look and feel. If that relationship is traumatic or toxic, you are more likely to stay in toxic relationships when you’re older.

When a child or adolescent’s formative relationships aren’t secure, it can also make forming new relationships difficult. Past trauma from your childhood can make it difficult for you to feel vulnerable with new romantic partners and friends. Because relationship trauma can also affect your self-esteem, you may even feel unworthy of love or healthy relationships.

These feelings can cause you to avoid forming new bonds, end healthy relationships early, or engage in other self-sabotaging behaviors. However, developing healthy relationships is a part of the healing process – and it is possible to form new relationships with the right strategies and mental healthcare.

Coping Strategies and Treatments

With help from a trauma-informed therapist, you can develop self-care strategies to deal with fear and distress, process your trauma, and learn to engage in healthy relationships. These evidence-based therapies and self-soothing techniques can help you overcome past relationship trauma.

Grounding Techniques

When you have intrusive thoughts or feel anxiety and panic, practicing grounding techniques can help bring you back to the present moment and control your emotional responses. Counting your breaths, scanning your body, or focusing on your surroundings are all skills you can practice and use no matter what your surroundings are.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

CBT is an effective form of psychotherapy that helps you identify negative thoughts and behavioral patterns. After you identify them, CBT teaches you to counter those thoughts and change your behaviors.

For example, if you have consistent negative thoughts about yourself or your relationships, CBT teaches you to identify when those thoughts are happening and adjust them. Similarly, if you commonly leave healthy relationships when they become too serious, CBT helps you identify why and how to counter the behavior.

Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

Dialectic behavioral therapy is a type of talk therapy based on CBT that focuses on accepting circumstances and learning new skills to improve your emotional responses. DBT training takes place within support groups or in individual therapy.

While developed originally for BPD, DBT is now used to treat several mental health conditions, including PTSD. It teaches distress tolerance and how to draw boundaries and form interpersonal relationships. This makes it especially helpful if you are struggling with past relationship trauma.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a therapeutic approach designed to help individuals process and heal from traumatic experiences. EMDR involves the patient recalling distressing memories while simultaneously undergoing bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or tapping. This process is believed to help the brain reprocess traumatic information, reducing its emotional impact and enabling more adaptive thinking and coping mechanisms.

Moving On Is Possible

It can be hard to realize you are experiencing trauma while you’re in an abusive relationship, especially when you’re younger.

Relationship trauma during your adolescence can cause you to believe what you are experiencing is normal, or believe that it’s your fault. These thoughts can continue to affect your mental health long after you have left the abusive relationship behind – but they can be unlearned.

No matter what trauma you have suffered from, you can heal. With a strong support system and trauma-informed therapy, you can move beyond the traumatic experience. While you can never undo the experience, it doesn’t have to define you or your future family, platonic, and romantic relationships. A better day is waiting for you once you begin the healing process.