Ptsd And Intimacy

Ptsd And Intimacy

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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and intimate relationships don't always go well together. On top of that, dating when you are in your 20s is tough. Finding people to date in real life is next to impossible, and online dating can be a fiasco. If you ask around, you'll find that many people in their 20s know and understand this struggle--myself being one of them. What most people don't understand, however, is how much more difficult dating and forming intimate relationships can be when you're suffering from PTSD.
Posttraumatic stress disorder and intimate relationships do not mesh well. Relationships are built on trust, and PTSD causes people to lose trust in everyone around them. At their very core, relationships are incongruent with the cold and harsh nature of PTSD .
Posttraumatic stress disorder can consume your entire life. When someone with PTSD is sharing his or her life with another person, that person is sharing his or her disorder as well. And even if partners of people with PTSD understand and accept the idea of mental health , it can still be hard to handle someone that's suffering from a mental illness . It's difficult to sleep next to someone that wakes up screaming night after night. It's difficult to love someone who has fits of rage or daily panic attacks . It's difficult to care for someone who struggles to express emotions or maybe has no emotions at all. Loving someone with PTSD is just difficult.
Of course, that's not to say that having an intimate partnership with PTSD isn't possible. Many people suffering from the disorder do, in fact, have long and happy relationships. As tough as it may be, it's possible to navigate intimate relationships while healing from trauma .
First and foremost, I should clarify that I have never really developed a long-lasting, healthy relationship . I'm only in my mid-20s, and I'm still learning a lot about life. Every relationship I enter is a new learning experience, and I have made a lot of mistakes along the way. But I've also become wiser towards what works and what doesn't work when I'm navigating intimate relationships alongside my PTSD.
One of the most important things I've learned so far is that I need to be upfront and honest about who I am with my partner. It's a plain and simple fact that I have PTSD. It's not going away anytime soon, and the PTSD symptoms I suffer from on a daily basis aren't going away either.
I don't like to be touched or cuddled. I don't like talking about my emotions. I'm very jumpy, and I don't sleep well . These are all components of myself that I'm working on changing, but I'm not there yet, and I don't know how long it will take for me to heal from my trauma.
When I enter into new relationships , I aim to be as honest as possible about who I am and how I experience life. I don't feel compelled to tell each and every person I meet about my deep traumas, but if it's someone that is worth sticking around for, I will.
Relationships aren't meant to be easy. They can be messy. They can feel confusing. But people with PTSD don't have to be afraid of them. By being honest about who they are and the limitations they face, people with PTSD can start to build intimate relationships.
What is your experience with PTSD and intimate relationships? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
APA Reference Avery, B.
(2020, February 12). PTSD and Intimate Relationships: Problems and Solutions, HealthyPlace. Retrieved
on 2022, July 10 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/traumaptsdblog/2020/2/ptsd-and-intimate-relationships-problems-and-solutions

Find Beth on Instagram and Twitter .
2022 HealthyPlace Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Site last updated July 10, 2022

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Understanding How Abuse Victims Love, Part 2 – Lacey T. Patrick - […] could manifest in people with C-PTSD, also known as emotional flashbacks. Shirley Davis from the C-PTSD Foundation says that…

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Living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) is very challenging. It affects every aspect of the lives of those who suffer under its symptoms. In this article, we are going to examine together with a brief synopsis of CPTSD and how this disorder creates difficulty in forming and maintaining intimate relationships.
CPTSD isn’t yet in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the Bible used by psychiatrists and psychologists to diagnose mental health issues. Instead, it is part of a category called Trauma and Stress-Related Disorders under post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The problem is that while PTSD generally involves a single traumatic event, complex post-traumatic stress disorder involves exposure to repeated traumatic events. One argument is the reason for the exclusion of CPTSD from the DSM-5 is that while PTSD affects 7-8% of adults, CPTSD occurs in .05% of adults.
The symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder are broader than those of PTSD. In the following sections, we’ll examine these deeper problems and how they affect a survivor’s ability to form and maintain healthy intimate relationships.
One of the most profound and perhaps the root of all the other issues, that will be mention below, involves problems trusting others.
Since many who live with complex traumatic-stress disorder in their lives formed the condition as the result of enduring ongoing trauma while young, it isn’t hard to see why trust issues are a problem.
The trauma normally involves some type of abuse and betrayal by the very people who were supposed to care for and nurture survivors, when they were children. This repeated behavior by caregivers trains the child’s brain to cope with the inevitability of more trauma. Furthermore, when these children become adults, their brains are already hardwired to be fearful of intimacy and cautious of trust.
Flashbacks are not simply remembering a traumatic event. Flashbacks thrust survivor back in time and relive the events as though they are occurring today.
There are three types of flashbacks, visual, somatic, and emotional. Although all three are harmful to the formation of relationships, emotional flashbacks are more so than the other two.
When survivors experience emotional flashbacks, they are irrational, and will often lash out at innocent people in their current lives. Normally, people who have these flashbacks do not understand where the emotional outburst comes from, and it takes a long time to make amends to those they harm.
Survivors who live with CPTSD feel disconnected from humanity and themselves. In fact, survivors often describe how they feel as though they are here on earth by mistake and do not belong anywhere. Survivors often remain in an intense state of loneliness even when standing in a crowded room, because of the disconnection and lack of trust they feel toward and from other people.
The lack of trust survivors experience causes them to either consciously or subconsciously push anyone who wants to get close away and is compounded by internal beliefs that they are damaged goods, broken, and unlovable.
Survivors of complex trauma have a deep subconscious need to watch for any indication that someone is going to harm them. This results in survivors constantly scanning their environment for signs and sounds that tell their brains to prepare to fight, flee, or even freeze.
The signs might include non-verbal movements, body language, and tone of voice of another person, as well as sounds in the room or outside, that remind them of a previous traumatic event.
Hypervigilance is exhausting and makes a survivor choose to be alone rather than to be in a group where they can socialize and form relationships.
Due to the trauma perpetrated by caregivers in childhood, many people living with complex traumatic-stress disorder have deep-seated body image problems.
Too often, people who have CPTSD see their bodies as ugly, fat, and undesirable. These difficulties with self-image can lead to not only the formation of eating disorders, but also making the survivor fearful of allowing others to see them unclothed.
It is easy to see how this internal terror can lead to the survivor choosing not to get involved in an intimate partner relationship.
Survivors often have one of two different reactions when it comes to relation
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