How My Healthy Relationship Triggered My Childhood Trauma

“Our relationship gives me so much peace, security, and safety,” my partner told me one day.

I responded with a cued coping mechanism of, “Aww, me too.”

Then in my mind, I played a movie montage of all the nights I cried from reliving childhood trauma, wrote him dozens of breakup texts from the notes app on my phone under the subject PTSD LIES, and post-disassociation moments from EMDR therapy.

This past summer, I had dark childhood memories come back for the first time accompanied by several PTSD emotional flashbacks and learned from my neurofeedback coach that I had spent most of my life in a state of *dissociation*.

My partner’s unconditional love and healthy upbringing have mirrored the grief I needed to do in my childhood.

He and his healthy family has shown me to recognize what happened to me, what I didn’t get, and who I could have become if I got what I needed.

Healing trauma is a complex grief process and part of what I go through in this relationship that I don’t often share.

But after finally sharing this snippet of my life on Tiktok, this video went viral, reaching over 70K views and receiving hundreds of comments of people going through the same thing.

You can watch it here.

The power of Tiktok can bring all of us together and heal as a collective, especially those of us healing from childhood trauma.

The number one tip I can give to anyone going through this tough journey of healing developmental trauma is to write whenever the tough emotions come in.

The gift you can give yourself is to witness the human experiences you have and channel all of this emotional truth in a journal or on the notes app of your phone.

We deserve to feel what we need to feel as we move forward from trauma.

Let those words come out of your fingers as the release you need to move you closer to a state of neutrality.

Let your words be messy.

Let your words be raw.

Let your stories be unearthed.

Release your voice through words and let every emotion emerge from your body.

This is where the trauma writing process begins.

To feel whatever the fuck you need to feel without apologies.

Writing is for YOU.

Always.

Sincerely,

Mary

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