How Complex Trauma Shapes Your Relationships: Breaking Free from Unhealthy Patterns
Why Trauma Survivors Struggle in Relationships
I have written in the past about complex trauma (C-PTSD), it’s relationship to neurodivergence, steps to healing and its causes. I thought it worth to deep dive a little more into how complex trauma can make you more vulnerable to further abusive or toxic relationships.
Those who experience C-PTSD often find that their relationships feel like a battlefield, just hard. They are filled with cycles of emotional pain, confusion, and self-doubt. People find themselves drawn to toxic relationship patterns without fully understanding why. If you've struggled with abusive relationships, difficulty setting boundaries, or repeating painful relationship dynamics, your history of trauma may hold the key to understanding these challenges.
Recognizing complex trauma is such an important step towards healing. Through deeper awareness, self-compassion, and support, you can first recognize, then break free from unhealthy patterns and build relationships that are safe, fulfilling, and aligned with your values.
What Is Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)? How It Differs from PTSD
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) typically develops after a single traumatic event, such as a car accident, natural disaster, or assault. PTSD is often associated with flashbacks, nightmares, and hypervigilance, all tied to a specific, time-limited trauma.
Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), on the other hand, results from prolonged, repeated trauma, often occurring in childhood or within relationships. This can include:
Emotional, physical, or sexual abuse
Chronic neglect or invalidation
Growing up in an unpredictable, high-conflict home
Long-term exposure to abusive relationships or domestic violence
How Domestic Violence Can Lead to C-PTSD
C-PTSD doesn’t just develop from childhood trauma—it can also result from abusive adult relationships, particularly in cases of domestic violence. Survivors of long-term emotional, physical, or psychological abuse often experience:
A constant state of fear and hypervigilance, never knowing when the next outburst or attack will happen
Gaslighting and manipulation, which erodes self-trust and distorts reality
Repeated cycles of abuse and "honeymoon phases", making it harder to leave
A loss of personal identity, as the survivor’s needs, emotions, and autonomy are systematically erased
Domestic violence can create the same deep, lasting wounds as childhood trauma, making it difficult for survivors to feel safe, trust others, or set healthy boundaries even after leaving the abusive relationship.
Experiencing domestic violence can cause C-PTSD. But having C-PTSD (whether from childhood abuse or DV) may make your more vulnerable to abusive and toxic relationships later in life. Because C-PTSD is so deeply tied to relationships, it often shapes how we engage all our relationships.
Common Relational Struggles Linked to Complex Trauma
Fear of abandonment - this may keep you trapped in unhealthy relationships. You may be more likely to overlook problems, you may blame yourself when things are difficiult, you may feel unlovable
Struggles with boundaries—either being too rigid or too porous, or both. This means that you pull people too close, enmeshing yourself with them and their lives. Alternatively, you may throw up walls, making it hard to connect to you. Many people who have C-PTSD have a disorganized attachment style, that is, switching between too close and too distant in reaction to their relationships
Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions - when you are exposed to abuse in childhood, it is incredibly common to internalize the abuse. You begin to feel responsible for the happiness of the people around you so have learnt to silence your own needs, people-please and avoid conflict at all costs
Hypervigilance - experiencing dangerous relationships can leave you on edge. You are left constantly scanning for signs of rejection or danger in relationships
Being drawn to relationships that replicate past wounds - Freud called this the ‘repetition compulsion’ - we are often drawn to relationships that mirror previous experiences, even when they cause pain. This can be because of familiarity or an attempt at ‘closing the loop’ and achieving a different outcome.
Complex trauma doesn’t just shape how you think about relationships—it affects your nervous system, self-worth, and ability to trust others.
Why Complex Trauma Can Lead to Toxic Relationships
If you've experienced emotionally abusive relationships, you may wonder: Why did I stay? Why didn’t I see the signs? The truth is, complex trauma makes it incredibly difficult to recognize and leave unhealthy relationships because of the impact it has.
1. Trauma Bonding: Why Leaving Feels Impossible
A trauma bond forms when intense emotional highs and lows keep you attached to someone, even when they hurt you. This is especially common in narcissistic or emotionally abusive relationships, where the cycle of love-bombing, devaluation, and intermittent reinforcement mirrors childhood experiences of unstable affection. The highs and lows that are so painful and harmful are also almost addictive.
Humans have an immense capacity for adaptation to our environment, whether healthy or unhealthy. Many people who move onto healthy relationships struggle at first, finding the lack of conflict, drama, and emotional yo-yoing ‘boring’. Healthy relationships are rarely dramatic.
2. Attachment Wounds: Why You Might Attract Emotionally Unavailable Partners
Complex trauma often disrupts attachment patterns, making emotionally unavailable or abusive partners feel familiar. If you had to earn love as a child, you might unconsciously repeat that cycle in adulthood. This might look like starting relationships with people who are emotionally unavaiable or challenging, believing that if you just try hard enough, you’ll be redeemed and receive the love and validation you deserve. Emotionally abusive relationships can harm your self-esteem to such an extent that you expose yourself to further emotional harm in an attempt to ‘make up’ for the past failures. Not only does this expose you to further pain, but it also places the responsibility for the relationship and any conflict to you. This allows abusers to take advantage of your vulnerabilities, since your default would be to blame yourself.
Signs of Attachment Wounds in Relationships:
Anxious Attachment – Feeling desperate for reassurance, fearing abandonment, and over-explaining yourself
Avoidant Attachment – Shutting down emotionally, struggling with intimacy, and pushing people away when they get too close
Disorganized Attachment – Swinging between craving closeness and fearing it, often feeling conflicted in relationships
3. People-Pleasing and Fawning in Abusive Relationships
When conflict feels unsafe (as it often does for trauma survivors), you may develop fawning behaviors—prioritizing keeping the peace over your own needs. This is particularly common with people who were exposed to abuse in childhood. Rather than facing the horrifying truth that the caregiver that you rely on is unsafe, you take responsibility for their mood and actions. It is often safer emotionally for a child to blame themselves than recognize abuse from a caregiver. This shows up later in life as a sense of responsibility for the mood of the people around you, so you silence your own needs, people-please, and avoid conflict at all costs
This can look like:
Ignoring red flags because you don’t want to be “too sensitive”
Apologizing for things that weren’t your fault to prevent conflict
Over-functioning in relationships, taking responsibility for the abuser’s emotions
These behaviors may have helped you survive childhood, but in adulthood, they keep you trapped in one-sided, unhealthy relationships.
Breaking Free: Healing From Complex Trauma in Relationships
The good news? You can unlearn these patterns. By no means is this an easy process. It is very often painful and difficult to explore the impact of painful and abusive relationships, take stock of how people may have let you down, and then recognize the ways in which this has changed the way that you show up in your relationships. Healing means reclaiming your sense of self, recognizing harmful dynamics, and building relationships based on mutual respect.
1. Build Awareness: Understanding the Patterns
The first step is to identify the ways trauma has shaped your relationships. Ask yourself:
Do I feel safe expressing my needs in relationships?
Do I over-function and take responsibility for others’ feelings?
Do I ignore red flags in the hope things will get better?
Do I struggle to set (and enforce) boundaries?
Recognizing these patterns allows you to step out of autopilot and make different choices.
2. Rewire Your Nervous System: Safety Comes First
Trauma lives in the body, not just the mind. Healing involves teaching your nervous system that safety and stability are possible. Some ways to do this:
EMDR - challenging the negative beliefs about yourself that live in your body
Somatic work - getting in touch with your body, through breathwork, grounding techniques, movement
Developing self-compassion—talk to yourself the way you’d talk to a loved one
Mindfulness and nervous system regulation to break patterns of hypervigilance
3. Practice Healthy Boundaries: Saying No Without Guilt
Boundaries are a form of self-care. They protect your energy, emotional well-being, and sense of self. They are also nuanced and delicate. Many of those dealing with the aftermath of abuse will respond by throwing up rigid boundaries, becoming almost unapproachable and shutting themselves off from others. This can be helpful as you heal within yourself, but in the long-run rarely reflects that values and connection that most people have. We learn to connect with healthy people and developing healthy boundaries can start with :
Identifying your non-negotiables in relationships
Learning to tolerate discomfort when enforcing boundaries
Recognizing that saying no doesn’t make you “mean” or “selfish”
4. Seek Support: Therapy Can Help Rewire Relationship Patterns
Healing from relationship trauma is rarely a solo journey. Relational trauma is healed through healthy relationships. Therapy can provide:
Validation—helping you see your experiences clearly, without self-blame
A roadmap for breaking patterns and creating healthier relational dynamics
Practical tools for healing attachment wounds and emotional triggers
If complex trauma has shaped your relationships, working with a trauma-informed therapist can help you untangle false beliefs about love, self-worth, and attachment—allowing you to build connections rooted in safety and mutual respect. Having just one healthy relationship can allow you the safety and practise ground for healing.
Final Thoughts: You Are Not Broken, and Healing Is Possible
Complex trauma may have shaped your past relationships, but it does not define your future. By understanding its impact, building self-awareness, and practicing new relational skills, you can break free from unhealthy patterns and create relationships that align with your worth.
You deserve safety, respect, and love that does not come at the cost of your well-being.
If you're ready to start your healing journey, therapy can provide the guidance and support you need.
Learn more about my work with those grappling with C-PTSD here