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By: Barbi Pecenco Kolski, MFT-Intern
It's important to know what triggers you in your relationships to
feel intense negative emotions, whether it's scared, sad, angry,
frustrated, or ashamed. Often, it is the same theme that keeps
coming up in various relationships over time. The trigger is based
on a wound that could have happened in your childhood, but it may
have also been created in relationships with your exes, your
brothers or sisters, or even something that happened in your social
circle (or lack of) while you were growing up.
Common sensitivities include:
Fear of abandonment
Fear of relying on and trusting others
Feeling unlovable
Not being accepted
Not being heard
Feeling suffocated
Feeling taken advantage of
Feeling inadequate/worthless
Feeling abused/mistreated
Feeling ashamed of yourself or your partner
Feeling left out/not important/like you don't fit in
For example, let's say that your mother left your family when you
were young. One day she was there, and one day she wasn't. And that
you didn't receive any reasonable explanation for why she had left,
and maybe you didn't receive comfort around it either. This is an
incident that would be wounding and could change the way you view
yourself, others, and relationships. Without being able to address
this incident, to process it and to heal from it, this is a wound
you will likely still be carrying with you today. You may continue
to struggle with a belief that you could be left again by someone
important to you. In turn, your sensitivities would be a fear of
abandonment and a fear of trusting people close to you.
Whether or not you consciously understand that you are carrying this
relationship sensitivity, your brain remembers the original wound as
if it happened yesterday. And it is extremely easy for important
others to trigger that wound and unleash extremely negative emotions
from you.
Clients often come to therapy unaware of their sensitivities and
triggers. They really believe that their partner is simply behaving
in any number of horrible ways that logically get them upset. They
believe anyone would react the same way that they do. However, most
of what triggers us is our perception of what's going on, and our
perceptions have a lot more to do with what we believe is happening
in our subjective reality, based on our unique experiences and
wounds, than what is happening in a completely objective reality.
That is why people often get so much out of therapy - because there
is an objective third party to help make sense of some of these
issues that are too difficult to sort through when you are in the
midst of it.
Our sensitivities make relationships difficult to navigate our way
through. Not to mention that your partner has a set of their own
experiences and beliefs about relationships, which create their own
subjective reality about what's going on, and often their
sensitivities trigger yours and you both just go around and around
and around.
For example, if you have abandonment issues, you may have chosen
someone who feels easily suffocated in relationships and needs a lot
of space. But their needing a night off from you triggers your fear
of abandonment and your brain experiences this as just like what
happened when your mom left. So you react. Your reaction, which is
likely going to be a mix of scared, sad, and mad, may seem over the
top to your partner, but makes a lot of sense in the context of your
history. Someone with a different history may not be triggered by
this at all, so it's up to you to know what your triggers are, how
they affect your relationship and take ownership of them.
If you don't understand that these two incidents are a similar
(abandonment) theme, then you will not be able to take
responsibility for your sensitivity and you will put all the blame
on your partner. Your partner will likely feel confused, scared, and
even angry at your behavior and will need more distance from you,
which will be even more agonizing for you.
The way out of this is to make your sensitivities conscious and
accept them as a part of you. This will make situations less
overwhelming when they happen, which they inevitably will. Our
partners aren't perfect, and will likely trigger us many, many times
over the course of a relationship. When you take responsibility for
your triggers, you can talk about them in a different way with your
partner. When they understand why you react the way you do, they may
feel more empathetic to your experiences and be able to be a healing
presence for you, instead of a re-wounding experience.
Tell your partner what your sensitivities are, how they developed,
and when they get triggered the most. A quick exercise for
identifying your trigger(s), and your typical moves after you've
been triggered is to think about the last 3-5 arguments you had with
your partner and fill in the following:
When ___________________________________(identify the situations
that trigger your negative emotions with as little blame as
possible, i.e., When I felt like you didn't think my opinion
mattered, When you didn't want to sleep over, When you were talking
to that girl in the bar, When you don't seem to be listening to me,
When you leave during our fights) I feel insecure about our
relationship.
This situation reminds me of
_______________________________(identify the first time you remember
this sensitivity forming, i.e., When my mom left when I was five
and no one told me what was going on, When my brothers left me out
and didn't want to play with me, When my dad drank and got abusive,
When my friends all turned on me and I was all alone, When my ex
cheated on me, When I realized my sister was the star of the family
and I was a nobody).
What I take the situation with you to mean about ME is
_________________(What do you tell yourself your partner's behavior
means about you? i.e., That I will never be cared about, That I
am not lovable, That you just want to get away from me, That I am
worthless, That I'm always going to be taken advantage of).
What I take the situation with you to mean about YOU
is_____________________(What do you tell yourself your partner's
behavior means about them? i.e., You are not trustworthy, You are
a failure, You will leave me, I can't rely on you, You are
irresponsible, You don't care).
What I take the situation with you to mean about our RELATIONSHIP
is____________________ (What do you tell yourself your partner's
behavior means about the bond that you share? i.e., This
relationship isn't going to work, This relationship is too scary…too
unsafe…too unstable…too hurtful, This relationship will never meet
my needs).
The move I make when I feel negative emotions about these situations
is________________________(identify what you usually do when you are
upset, i.e., I lash out at you, I shut down and pretend I have no
emotion at all, I get quiet and give you the silent treatment, I get
critical of you and shame you).
The feeling that I show you is__________________(keep it simple,
i.e., mad, sad, bad/shame, scared, frustrated, numb).
But underneath that, what I'm really feeling is
____________________(Try to identify the very first feeling that
comes up. Often when we feel scared, sad or ashamed, we display
anger or numbness. Think about what happens FIRST. Did your
feelings get hurt? If so, you were sad. Did you believe that your
partner didn't care? Then you probably felt sad or scared. Did your
partner give you the message that you were a bad person? Then you
may have felt ashamed, Did your partner betray you somehow? They you
probably felt angry and/or scared).
I gave you the message that ______________________________(What
message do you send your partner when you have a negative emotion?
i.e., Do you pretend you don't care? Do you only show anger when
you are really hurting? Do you say you want to be alone when you
really don't? Do you act like you hate your partner?)
What I really want from you is_______________________(Figure out for
yourself what you are really wanting at those times and tell your
partner, i.e., For you to stay and talk to me, For you to hold me
and comfort me, To get some time to cool off).
Once you complete this exercise you should have a good understanding
about what your specific sensitivities are, how you behave when you
are triggered, and what you really need during those times. Share
with your partner any information that you think could be helpful to
them in understanding your behaviors and emotions.
One important thing to look out for is whether your partner
genuinely can and wants to be a healing presence for you. That means
that you chose a good partner who wants to help you with your
sensitivities and simply needs your help identifying what they are
so they can be more sensitive to them. That doesn't mean that you
put all the work on your partner. It is your job to manage your
triggers, and it is your partner's job to help you with your job.
There is a chance however, that you chose someone who only has the
ability to rewound you. An unfortunate relationship paradox is that
we often generate a lot of chemistry with people who constantly
trigger our core sensitivities. For example, if you have issues with
abandonment, then it is a possibility that you are most attracted to
people who really don't have the capacity to have a secure, loving
relationship. You may constantly feel insecure in the relationship
because your partner has one foot out the door at all times. Often
we take this personally and try to get our partner to change and
love us better, when it means a lot more about them, their own
wounds and their inability to be loving in any relationship.
Try to differentiate between a generally loving partner who just
needs some education about responding to you when you are upset and
is motivated to work with you on creating an emotionally safe
relationship, and a partner who may be abusive or otherwise further
damaging. Can you tell the difference between a partner who really
has one foot out the door and one who it just feels like they do
because that is the issue you are always struggling with?
If you have difficulty in knowing for sure whether you are attracted
to people who are hurtful and can't change or whether you are simply
with someone who needs skills about how to be in a relationship with
you, try couples counseling. Don't forget that you have
sensitivities but so does your partner, and yours are most likely
triggering theirs, and it can be extremely difficult to get out of
that negative cycle on your own. A good couples counselor can help!
This article was written by Barbi
Pecenco Kolski, Marriage & Family Therapist Intern. She specializes
in relationship counseling
in San Diego, CA. You can find more information at her website
www.sdcouplestherapy.com.
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