Finding yourself in a healthy relationship after trauma can feel like charting unknown waters.
By Meadowlark Monaghan, AIM Youth Advisory Board Member
Sometimes, you feel filled to the brim with gratitude and love to be on this new journey. Other times, it’s as if the rug is going to be pulled out from under you at any given moment. Learning to feel safe within a relationship, particularly after trauma, takes compassion for yourself. And above all else, it takes self love.
With another AIM Mind, Body, Soul event just around the corner (RSVP here!) I could not be more thrilled that our theme for these upcoming panel discussions revolves around self love. Self love is the first (and in my experience, arguably the most imperative) step to settling into a healthy relationship after trauma. In the same vein of how we speak to self care, you have to fill your own cup before you can pour into another’s.
This applies to all categories of relationships as well. Focus on the love you have in your life, not where you feel you lack it. Whether the nature of that love is romantic, platonic, or familial—use self love as your guide to navigating healthy relationship dynamics after trauma. No matter what the relationships in your life look like, we can all start with ourselves. Read on to learn how to use a self love perspective to regulate into healthy relationships after trauma.
1+1=3
If I could deduce love into a formula, it would be: 1+1=3.
Love is not just about two people. Love takes you, someone else, and a relationship. A healthy relationship involves love for yourself, love for someone else, and love for the relationship that unites the two of you.
Each of these three require nurturing, separately and together. Acknowledging your partner, friend, or family member as a separate entity from the relationship creates a healthy distinction between two, individual people and the relationship between them. This reframe parcels out what baggage is yours or theirs, allows you to separate your conditioning from the nature of your relationship, and overall creates healthy boundaries that (ironically) foster closeness. From there, you’re able to see when your actions are supporting your partner and/or your relationship. At times, these will be different things! I don’t do the majority of the dishes for my partner because I love him, I do it because it’s my agreed-upon chore assignment. This way, I never have to do laundry a day in my life. In other words, we help each other with house tasks because we love each other. We agree upon mutually-decided, chore assignments because it feels like a fair dynamic for our relationship.
By remembering to value each of these as separate entities, you also make space for boundaries that prevent you from falling into enmeshment or codependency—unhealthy dynamics that no longer serve us. By seeing yourself as whole and complete on your own, you create space for other love to come into your life, without the expectation for it to complete you. By starting with self love, you set yourself up for a healthy dynamic before a relationship even begins.
We are more than the experiences we have.
Unfortunately for us all, trauma is a great unifier. We all have experienced trauma. Despite whether our trauma refers to the loss of a beloved pet or having parents with an abusive relationship, distressing life events impact our brain. In response, the brain creates trauma responses to protect us from pain we’ve experienced. Isn’t that sweet! However, what happens when we’re no longer in that experience?
When your mind is accustomed to unhealthy dynamics, it becomes comfortable with that perspective. It knows what to expect. If our brains had a say in the matter, they would prefer to go through a similar traumatic experience because it could then generate familiar options for coping through it. As a result, new experiences may register as unsettling, even when what’s new is healthier for us.
When it comes to our relationships, unhealthy family modeling, friendships without boundaries, the dynamic of our first relationship, all impact how we move through our relationships today. Looking back on our formative experiences and patterns allows us to disseminate what trauma is ours before bringing that baggage into a partnership.
Life likes to present us with scenarios to learn a lesson until we’ve learnt it.
If you experienced codependent friendships in high school, it’s likely that you still have codependent relationships with your family, friends, or even coworkers. This is where self awareness of our conditioning becomes integral to breaking unhealthy patterns. By discovering where we are falling into an old narrative of teenage codependency, we can then break-through that pattern by rewriting our experience in the present. (Tip: neuroplasticity helps a lot here!)
It’s important to recognize that this requires deep, mental health work. The type of work that you can’t wrap with a bow and present to a new partner as a Valentine’s Day gift. This work never ends, therefore it’s important to recognize that we are never done healing. In that vein, we (and our partners) are not projects to “fix” or “heal”.
Healthy relationships aren’t formed to help heal each other; healthy relationships heal alongside one another. Utilizing the 1+1=3 perspective enables us to remember to create this space of healing alongside one another. We’re not each one half of a whole, we are whole and complete on our own. Coming together doesn’t complete love, it simply creates more of it.
So, let’s unpack self love, together.
The work is never complete, therefore we make the journey better by doing it together. Here are some journal prompts on self love and relationships to write out in your favorite notebook stream of consciousness style, to chat through with your partner over date night, or even to bring to a next therapy session.
Self Love + Relationship Prompts:
- Am I able to easily express love to myself? How?
- Am I able to easily express love to others? How?
- What relationships am I grateful for?
- What is the difference between love and respect?
- What was my parents/caregivers relationship like as I was growing up? How did that impact the way I viewed partnership as a child?
- Do I feel emotionally safe in my relationship?
- What aspects of myself that I don’t align with come up in relationships or while fighting with a partner? How can I show that part/those parts of myself compassion?
- What does unconditional love mean to me?
- Is it easier to give or receive love?
- What is challenging about love?
- What is rewarding about love?
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About the Author
Meadowlark Monaghan (she/hers) is a consultant using her knowledge gained as a mental health professional to act as a liaison between brands, creators, + online communities with the field of psychology and mental health. She also co-hosts the personal development podcast, Thoughts May Vary. Her work has been seen with Madhappy, Local Optimist, The Mayfair Group, Lonely Ghost, AIM Youth Mental Health, NAMI San Diego and more.
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Krista Reuther is the Assistant Director of Ohana’s Community Health and Prevention Program. She received her Masters in Public Health and Social Work at UC Berkeley. She comes to this position after 14 years of clinical social work experience at Stanford Children’s Hospital in pediatric oncology, critical care, and bereavement. Her goal is to reduce the incidence of mental illness in children and adolescents in Monterey County.
Dr. Guss is a 35-year veteran educator with a doctorate degree in Educational Leadership. She served as a classroom teacher for 10 years, including two years as a teacher in a bilingual program in South Central Los Angeles. She has also served as a college professor, mentor teacher for new teachers, and a master teacher for teacher candidates completing their student teaching experience. She continues to be a strong advocate for the teaching profession.
Fellowship: Stanford University School of Medicine (1994) CA
Michael G. Thompson, Ph.D. is a consultant, author and psychologist specializing in children and families. He is the supervising psychologist for the Belmont Hill School and has worked in more than seven hundred schools across the United States, as well as in international schools in Central America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
is 15 years old and a sophomore at Marina High School in Marina, CA. Her academic interests include math, history, and psychology. She joined the AIM Ideas Lab in 2021 because she wanted to be a part of something that could have a great impact on her community. Marwa is interested in youth mental health because she has always been fascinated with the human mind and she wants to support those that are suffering who may feel like their challenges in life aren’t important enough or are too afraid to seek necessary help.
Giovanna Panetta is a 16 year old junior at Carmel High School. She has always been called to STEM subjects, specifically biology. The AIM Ideas Lab instantly attracted her attention as a research opportunity. Gia has always comprehended the importance of mental health. She knows that COVID only exacerbated previously existing problems, and that as a community we can try and find the root of those problems. Mental health is an integral part of life, and can impede a body’s ability to be healthy. She strongly believes that life is worth living, and she wants to help anyone that thinks otherwise.
Dr. Friedman completed her undergraduate degree in Psychology from University of California San Diego (UCSD). She went on to complete her masters and doctorate degrees (Ph.D.) in Clinical Psychology from Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science/Chicago Medical School. Dr. Friedman completed her pre-doctoral internship at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, and her post-doctoral fellowship training at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. Her clinical training and experience has been focused primarily on comprehensive assessment and effective treatments for anxiety, mood and related disorders. Dr. Friedman has extensive experience in providing Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for anxiety disorders (e.g. worry, OCD, social anxiety, phobias and PTSD), depression, adjustment disorders/life stress, insomnia and body-focused repetitive behaviors (e.g. Trichotillomania and skin picking). She has received training in evidence-based interventions for a variety of specific problems, including exposure with response prevention (ERP) for treatment of OCD, Prolonged Exposure (PE) for treatment of PTSD, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I). Moreover, she has specialty training in the treatment of childhood anxiety and related disorders, such as ADHD, selective mutism, separation anxiety, PTSD, depression and specific phobias. In addition, Dr. Friedman has developed an expertise in research on Trichotillomania and body-focused repetitive behaviors, which has led to numerous local and national presentations. Dr. Friedman regularly attends local and national conferences, training seminars and workshops in order to stay informed on the most up to date treatments and apply state of the art science into her clinical practice.
Dr. Piacentini is a board-certified clinical child and adolescent psychologist and Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. He directs the UCLA Child OCD, Anxiety, and Tic Disorders Clinic and Tourette Association Center of Excellence which provide diagnostic evaluation and treatment (both therapy and medication) for youth with the above problems. He also directs the UCLA Center for Child Anxiety Resilence, Education, and Support (CARES; carescenter.ucla.edu) which provides education and programming to parents, teachers, and clinicians about anxiety prevention and management.
Citlalli Nava is 18 years old and a first year majoring in Psychology at Hartnell Community College in Salinas, CA. She is passionate about understanding how mental health affects how youth think, act, and feel. Citlalli joined the AIM Ideas Lab in 2021 after witnessing the increase in mental health challenges in teenagers and considering the mental health issues they are facing. Citlalli is interested in youth mental health because it is a real problem faced by her generation.
Clinical and community psychologist and health care innovator Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, is CEO of the American Psychological Association, the leading scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. With more than 146,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students as members, APA promotes and disseminates psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve lives – a mission consistent with Evans’ life work.
