Better communication to avoid being mangled by the effects of your spouse’s trauma
Avoiding Colliding with Your Spouse’s Trauma
You struggle with your spouse. Their trauma leads to maladaptively cope with their vulnerable emotions. They avoid closeness with you and may respond in anger to you and bring up old hurts. You are confused, hurt, and worrying if things can ever change.
First thing, if you spouse has experienced trauma in their past, especially child abuse of any form, they need to work with a competent therapist that specializes in healing trauma.
Second, what can you do?
Reframe your view of your spouse’s trauma reactions
Wading through your spouse’s inability to deal with vulnerable emotions is so difficult. It is normal to feel offended by them and getting angry with them. If you catch yourself in the moment and remind yourself that they are hurting as well it will make it easier to respond to them in a way that can actually deepen your relationship with them on an emotional level. They theory being, if you can understand that they are in pain it will be easier to talk about their pain than to get mad at them and increase their feelings of shame and negative self-talk.
Focus on emotional pain related to their trauma
2. Focus on their pain and do your best to describe to them how they are feeling.
We always want to jump right into apologizing or explaining why they shouldn’t be mad with us. Those have their place, but without emotionally attuning to your spouse you will go through the same unhealthy pattern of trying to reason with someone who is currently in fight or flight mode. I would suggest at least 4 or 5 sentences of putting yourself into your spouse’s emotional state. If you can talk about the vulnerable emotion (maybe pain) that they are experiencing in the moment it takes the target off of you and onto their pain. It is much easier to talk about pain than it is to talk about anger. Anger is the secondary emotion, the vulnerable emotion is the primary “meaty” emotion that is much easier to talk about. You will find that as you do this your partner will be able to process this emotion better and your communication will improve.
Once you emotionally attune, it is our turn to share your emotions and thoughts
After you were able to listen to your spouse and emotionally attune with them, they will be ready (or at least more ready) to listen to you and hear your emotions. Presentation is everything here. You want to be persuasive and compassionate as well as genuine with them. Cultivating a style of communication with your spouse that conveys safety and lessens shame and guilt. Your goal is to become a predictable and safe person for your spouse.
Improve your own attachment
Work on yourself. Get into therapy and work through your attachment, anger, and annoyance with these situations. Use healthy coping skills like exercise, mindfulness, health eating, sufficient sleep, and journaling. Improve your empathy. Think about what certain emotions would feel like. Think about ways to share empathy with your spouse in a way that feel like you. Some clients just recite what I tell them in therapy in responding to their spouse. While that works in the moment as a first step, you will need to learn how to empathize in a genuine way that bears robust fruit. What do I mean by robust fruit? Are you softer with your spouse? Are you gentler with your spouse? Do you give them the benefit of the doubt? Can you express firm boundaries in a persuasive way? Get the picture?
Emotionally connecting with your spouse when they are having a traumatic reaction is not easy, but when you can change the communication pattern, little by little you will get a different result. That result being deeper emotional connection.
