My 5 Secrets to Navigating Through Trauma in Relationships
How to Support Your Partner and Feel Supported Whenever Conflicts Arise
As I sit down to write about how to navigate through trauma in relationships, I'm fueled by the profound journey my partner Hari and I have had together for the past 7 years. Our love story isn't one of only joy and laughter, it's also filled with pitfalls of pain, trauma, and healing. We made the decision together when we first met, that our relationship was a ‘heal-ationship’, meaning we were brought together to trigger each other’s childhood pains and traumas so they could be brought into the light of deep healing.
Like all long-term partnerships, we've had to graduate from the honeymoon stage of never triggering each other and be introduced to a world of emotional communication challenges. We quickly discovered the foundation-shaking effects of our childhood traumas on our connection and saw how they shaped the emotional limitations of our relationship dynamic. How we behaved with each other during these times of conflict and argument, our past wounds triggered us so deeply that we had to discover a deeper connection in love, empathy, and spiritual understanding.
As I share with you the most effective secrets I’ve found to navigate through trauma, I invite you to peer into your current relationships and gather any insights for yourself into how you can start creating a healthier dynamic together. I find the more practical and realistic I am in my approach to using these techniques, the easier it becomes to find our way through the darkness that arises. These 5 secrets are the essential keys to turning on your internal guiding light to illuminate the path of your relationship and shift it toward having more love, lightness, and liberation.
“When we communicate from the heart, our words have the power to heal and transform." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Secret #1 - A Commitment to Radically Open Honest Heartfelt Communication
Whenever Hari and I are challenged by some triggering event or situation, we immediately sit down to talk it out. The most triggered person is the one who is first allowed space to share the trauma that was triggered, while the other listens and waits until they have emptied everything out. If the heat and intensity of the argument are too hot, we may sometimes need to give space and inform the other how much time we require until we’re ready to speak about our triggers calmly and clearly.
When we can sit down together to share what is going on inside, we try to hold space to understand the context of past traumas. If it feels right, we may reach out and physically hold the other, or try to hold hands to bring a more grounded connection between us. We try to speak with sincerity, integrity, and vulnerability, always communicating with “I am feeling XYZ statements.” We are committed to speaking about our own personal experience, and not what we see or feel needs to change in the other. We also agree to never ping-pong back and forth in a defensive/attack blame game or find the judgments about the other for how and why we are triggered.
These agreements to having open honest heartfelt communication have helped tremendously in diffusing the bomb that the argument could potentially have. With these agreements in place, we feel safe enough to connect on a deeper more genuine level where we can be vulnerable enough to unravel our childhood wounds, and naturally create a healing impact on deeper childhood traumas. When we truly open up in this safe vulnerable way with each other, we soon feel the Lightness taking over the darkness. The presence of something Divine starts sneaking back in, guiding our hearts to foster a higher level of love, compassion, and understanding.
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.“ ~ Stephen Covey
Secret #2 - Engage in Reflective, Heartfelt, and Compassionate Listening
When my partner Hari shares her struggles with trauma, I will often close my eyes and focus on listening not just to her words, but to the emotions beneath them. As I’m tuning into her emotional body, I explore how that experience might feel inside her body. I try to listen to her trauma and what it needs, from the stories she has shared about her childhood. From this space, I can respond and care for her inner child with the love, empathy, and understanding that she perhaps did not receive.
Compassionate listening is not easy to do when you are triggered. So to get through this barrier, I try to hear the voice of the wounded child within her. When I can feel how her needs did not get met, I can understand what needs to happen in that next moment so that she might feel received, connected, and understood. By listening from my heart with empathy and compassion, we naturally foster a deeper sense of connection and a willingness to have more patience and understanding. This shift in your listening is magical and can transcend all the previous triggers where we felt unable to engage in a healthy healing conversation.
Reflective listening is another powerful way to communicate, which is when I let my partner know she is being heard and taken in. I will repeat back to Hari what I heard her say, to clarify any misunderstandings, as well as to help her feel that she has my full undivided presence and attunement. So I’m listening not just with my ears, but with a soft tender heart, seeking to understand the deeper meanings behind her words and repeat back to her what I understood. This reflection of her words creates a deeper trust and connection between us and allows us to relax into a healing conversation where we can process through any defensive layers of regurgitated trauma.
“Empathy is the impetus for creating change." - Max Carver
Secret #3 - Welcoming Infinite Patience as a Spiritual Practice
I often find that arguments can instantly become more heated when patience is lacking on any level. When my partner Hari expresses her need for more space or time to cope with a traumatic feeling that’s arising, I try to respond with the understanding that she has an infinite amount of time to feel and heal this wound.
Infinite patience is not initially easy when the ego is fired up in an argument, and the fight, flight, or freeze response is suddenly activated. Yet, when we place real healing above our ego’s need to be right, it’s easy to recognize that loving the other is about being deeply patient. I can then create a safe emotional bridge reconnecting our hearts when I realize how important it is to have ample time to be felt, understood, and not fixed.
When I am listening to Hari without any attempt to change or manipulate her, it is by far the greatest secret I’ve found for her to feel safe enough to explore the deeper wounds that she has carried throughout her life. It’s also far less effort for my masculine nature to just sit back and listen compassionately from my heart, instead of having to figure out how to fix the parts that are ‘broken’. By feeling we have an infinite amount of time to get through this, I start feeling relaxed and more compassionate for her pain. This initiates a step forward towards forgiveness, making her healing journey inseparable from mine.
When I have infinite patience, I have room inside my being for more compassion. When compassion is the highest priority in our communication, I am also honoring my need for more sensitivity, gentleness, and softness in our dynamic. With this approach, Hari will often respond to me with more kindness and tenderness, as I’m being patient and feeling empathic about her pain. Then, when it’s my turn to share my side of the story, she has the capacity to listen to my story from an infinitely patient space. Her heart is more open in this timeless dimension, and I can hear the sacred expression of her inner wisdom more clearly.
Cultivating empathy, compassion, and having infinite patience in a relationship is always going to turn into a deep and powerful spiritual practice. We are choosing to be rooted in infinite spirit, giving up the ego’s need to be right or happy in that moment. Here it’s easy to recognize the love and connection between us are more important than anything else. Compassion is that awareness which recognizes the sacredness and interconnectedness of all beings. You realize that your pain is no different than your partner’s, and see how their journey is intertwined with yours.
When compassion is combined with infinite patience, it creates the most supportive healing base structure a relationship can ever find. This magic combo gives each other the space to feel and hear the presence of Divine guidance within, and this allows your relationship to reengage in a path toward forgiveness and spiritual growth.
Without having empathy, patience, or compassion in any relationship, you cannot discover the most vital part of your healing process and awaken the highest spiritual connection together. If we don’t have the time or capacity to be sensitive enough to feel the other’s pain, how can we be sensitive to our own pain inside? By prioritizing empathy, patience, or compassion in the relationship’s final agenda, we naturally soften the rough edges around our past trauma and allow us to remove any defensive friction that would have caused our relationship to shatter.
"We are not separate from the whole. We are one with the sun, the earth, the air." - Carl Sagan
Secret #4 - Recognizing We Are All On The Same Team
In every argument with any couple, there is a moment when both people are triggered and both forget that we are all on the same team. Being on the same team means we recognize that we have a common goal we are both working toward. In this case, our traumas have the same goals and heartfelt desires which is to be loved and healed. Every human being on the planet has this same goal. We all want to feel deeply appreciated and loved, and feel how the other is openly receiving our love.
When my partner Hari or I get triggered and begin to have the slightest emotional or energetic conflict with each other, we try to immediately speak out that ‘something feels off in our connection’ or ask how the other is feeling. It feels like there’s an unbalanced energy in the room when one person becomes triggered yet does not share about it with humility and openness. By seeing that we are on the same team, we are inviting in radical honesty and deeper communication to each moment of our relating. This commitment toward supporting your teammate inspires both of us to bring more love and clarity to our communication.
After we have taken the time to share our differences in perspectives and emotionally triggered states, the deeper need of the relationship is always to quickly return to the understanding that we both have the same desire for unity and togetherness. We honor the fact that we are a family unit and are here to support each other’s hearts for healing, not to destroy each other’s egos. The teammate perspective helps to break free from the argumentive tongue, and we can instantly recognize that hurting the other is hurting ourselves. Team players can quickly understand how we are here to co-create a life together infused with unconditional support, empathy, and love.
The moment I realize we are on the same team, my voice shifts in tone and the conversation moves into a vibration of understanding, humility, and openness. I feel less reactive and defensive, even if she falls into blaming or fixing mode. As a team player, it feels natural to focus on the feelings of togetherness and communion as we have the rest of our lives together to look forward to ahead.
When I recognize we are on the same team, the attitude of gratitude creeps back in and our conversation quickly moves back to one that is about discovering a deeper unity and purpose together. Through unity, our relationship opens up to a higher spiritual understanding that we are all one giant human family on Earth who are all here to support each other in our soul’s journey through life. Understanding this truth, we naturally meet each other with empathic listening and love.
“We humans are always seeking the warmest attachments we can imagine”
~ Bonnie Badenoch
Secret #5 - Commitment to Coregulation After Every Conflict
Coregulation is just a fancy word for physically cuddling in a non-sexual yet deeply open heart-connecting way. The coregulation time after an argument is perhaps the most important and sacred time to create a deeper connection, communion, and real forgiveness with your partner. A partnership that skips this step often returns to the old argumentive patterns as their emotional bodies are not able to fully integrate into the physical form to create a deeply intertwined energy of harmony, trust, and love.
By co-regulating, you will expand the boundaries of your heart, as you’re able to melt and merge on a much deeper level since all the past triggers and traumas are activated to be seen, felt, and healed. Now, when I experience a reoccurring trauma in our dynamic, I see it as an opportunity to peer deeper into myself, reconnecting deeper not only with each other but also with the spiritual essence within our souls.
Simply by relaxing with each other in an intimately close space, there is no more room to fight. We breathe, make emotional releasing sounds, and give space to the activated presence of our pain. Here we can deepen our intimacy, shed even more layers of resistance to love, and feel how the divine loving God Source is all around us. By infusing our physical bond with gentleness, safety, and closeness, we discover the most sacred spiritual space in this bonding time together. Through a long deep cuddle, we regain a higher trust in our love and create a deeper heart connection together that we can bring out into our community.
I hope that you were able to take a few gems from this article and discover how to integrate them into your relationship with your partner. No healthy couple who has been living in the same space together for years can avoid all conflict and arguments. It’s just a healthier relationship to be able to talk it out, rather than stuff it away in the basement. This is where things build up tension and dis-ease in the body, and require you to deal with it at a later time and date.
If you have any questions about my article or want some personal guidance, feel free to Sign Up for a Manifesting Session on my website. I’m here to support you in creating a beautiful flowing loving relationship that you deserve to have. I’m available for one-on-one coaching/healing sessions over the phone this week, and I love working with couples to move through those super old stuck issues that won’t budge in their relationship dynamic. You can read more about all my educational gifts and the qualities I have to offer you in a manifesting session at this link. Enjoy!
Beautifully articulated my love ♥️