Complex relational trauma and relationships

The word trauma is everywhere these days. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We have become much better at recognising that experiences don’t simply disappear because they happened a long time ago, and that what once helped somebody survive can continue to shape how they feel, relate and respond many years later.

You may also have come across the term trauma-informed counselling. So what does that actually mean, and is it the same thing as psychotherapy with trauma?

Not quite.

Being trauma-informed describes the way a practitioner understands and approaches their work. A trauma-informed counsellor recognises that difficult or overwhelming experiences may sit behind what a person brings to therapy. They will usually think carefully about emotional and physical safety, trust, choice and the possibility that certain experiences within therapy could inadvertently feel threatening or overwhelming.

These are important principles. On a fundamental level, they should also increasingly form part of good therapeutic practice generally.

Psychotherapy with trauma can involve something more.

When trauma is held in relationships

Some traumatic experiences are relatively easy to identify. They might be the instances in which something happened. An event or experience was frightening, overwhelming or unbearable, and life felt different afterwards.

Complex relational trauma can be harder to put a finger on.

Sometimes there isn’t a single event to point towards. Instead, the difficulty developed through relationships themselves, perhaps over many years. A child may have learnt to operate at a heightened state of alert to somebody else’s mood, or perhaps to disappear emotionally when things became difficult. They may also have learnt that having needs carried a cost. Years later, those ways of coping can remain remarkably persistent.

Someone might know perfectly well on a cognitive level that their partner isn’t their unpredictable parent, for example, yet they may find themselves experiencing an apparently minor disagreement as something much bigger. Or they may understand intellectually that they are safe while their body seems to have missed the memo.

What can look confusing or even self-defeating in adult life often makes much more sense when we understand it as an adaptation. A way of responding that causes difficulty now may once have been remarkably useful. Part of psychotherapy is making sense of that without reducing a person to a collection of symptoms that need fixing.

This is where psychotherapy can become particularly interesting

Rather than asking only what happened to you?, we might become curious about what you had to learn about yourself and other people because of what happened. And some of those patterns may eventually appear in the therapy room too.

Of course, this isn’t simply about watching a client closely enough to spot their patterns. I am part of the relationship too. Relational psychotherapy asks something of the therapist: to remain curious about what is happening between us, what I might be experiencing in response, and what this could help us understand together.

That doesn’t mean every feeling or interaction has some hidden meaning that needs analysing. Sometimes an awkward silence is just an awkward silence. But at other times, what happens in the room can offer us a glimpse of something that has been very difficult to put into words.

The therapeutic relationship matters

My own approach to trauma psychotherapy is relational and grounded in Transactional Analysis.

This means I am interested not only in someone’s history or symptoms, but in what happens between us as we work together. Therapy itself can sometimes illuminate expectations that have developed through earlier relationships.

Perhaps disagreement feels dangerous. Perhaps depending on somebody feels uncomfortable. Perhaps being understood brings an unexpected urge to retreat. These moments aren’t inconveniences to get around before we return to the ‘real’ therapy. Very often, they are a legitimate and valuable part of the therapy.

Working in this way requires care, appropriate psychotherapy training and ongoing clinical supervision. It also requires a willingness not to rush. Trauma work is not necessarily about digging into painful memories as quickly as possible. Sometimes the important work is learning that something different can happen in a relationship now.

Finding trauma psychotherapy in West Sussex

If you are looking for trauma psychotherapy in West Sussex, it is reasonable to ask a prospective therapist about their training and how they understand trauma. Terms such as trauma-informed, trauma therapist, counsellor and psychotherapist can appear alongside one another online, while the training behind them can vary considerably.

You don’t need to become an expert in psychotherapy qualifications before choosing someone. You are, however, entitled to be curious about what a therapist has studied, how they work and whether their experience fits what you are bringing.

There can also be a temptation, once trauma has been identified, to make everything about trauma. I think we need to be careful about that. People are more complicated than the things that have happened to them, and not every difficulty needs to be traced back to an injury in the past.

Good psychotherapy needs room for uncertainty. Sometimes our understanding of what is happening changes as the relationship develops, and that is part of the work too. For me, good trauma psychotherapy begins with understanding that the ways we learnt to survive usually made sense once. Therapy gives us somewhere to become curious about whether they still need to run the show.

I offer relational psychotherapy for adults from my private practice in Washington, West Sussex, close to Storrington and between Worthing and Horsham, as well as online. I am a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, BACP Senior Accredited Psychotherapist and Certified Transactional Analyst (CTA(P)).  To find out more, get in touch.