The Goal of Trauma-Informed Couple's Therapy

Attending couple's therapy is a vulnerable endeavor. Allowing a therapist into the most tender parts of your relationship can feel scary, especially if you or your partner has a history of relational trauma or attachment wounding. Sometimes those fears about couples therapy sound like "is the therapist going to tell me I'm wrong, and my partner is right?" or "what if my partner and the therapist both don't understand me?" or "what if the therapist says I'm the broken one?".

I get it. That's where I think it's helpful to talk about primary goals in couples therapy, and where a trauma-informed approach comes in. I want clients to know that when you come to see me for couples therapy, I don't view your relationship as broken. I don't see you as broken, regardless of what the presenting issue is. My goal is to address the disconnect that brings you here, and to devleop mutual understanding about each of your needs for remaining safe and seen in your connection. When we stray from that sense of safety, I want us to have the tools that allow us to return to it together.

My goal isn't for you to stop "triggering" each other either. The goal isn't complete absence of activation or conflict. The goal of trauma-informed couple's therapy is for you both to learn how to hold one another's trauma repsonses, and love one another through the activation.

I truly believe that your trauma does not have to be healed in order for your relationship to be healthy. What we do need is mutual willingness to enter into the vulnerable space of acknowledging the trauma when it’s in the room. We need tools for safely tending to it rather than compounding the historic pain. This takes a mutual toolbox that includes skills and practices for co-regulation, re-orienting the nervous system, and attunement to what’s present, even when we’re upset.

This is what it means to love your partner through the experience of post traumatic stress, not despite it. Sometimes that looks like a pause, to mutually acknowledge that something deeper than the topic at hand is activated. It might sound like “I know we’re both mad right now, but I think something else is happening for you - are you able to tell me what that is?”

In couples therapy, we can use the concept of Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work to hold that duality of present emotion and historic trauma material. For the person activated, that might sound like “A part of me is so angry, but another part of me is terrified you’re going to leave.” Both of those parts are asking to be heard, and both of those parts deserve love.

Those vulnerable and raw moments during activation can be the most profound opportunity to love the parts of one another that typically live in the shadows. It’s an opportunity to offer one another a reparative experience not only for the topic at hand, but for the history that came alive in the face of the stressor. That’s why I don’t believe it’s necessary, or even possible, to be 100% healed before entering a relationship. Attuned relationship can be one of the most powerful ways to heal.

Candice Craft, LMFT

LMFT # 154305

soulcraftcounseling@gmail.com