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Why Can’t We Stop Fighting? How Trauma Affects Relationships
by
Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, LCSW and Chaya Feuerman, LCSW
Psychotherapists
Sruly and Shani have been fighting like cats and dogs for years. When they came to us, Shani said, “I know that we should discuss our disagreements in a respectful and calm manner, but somehow we can’t stop fighting.” Sruly told us, "We really do love each other, but when our buttons get pushed we just lose control." Shani said, "Sometimes when I am screaming, it is like I am on a runaway train. I am watching myself, I know it's wrong, but I just can't stop."
Sruly and Shani told us they had been in therapy a few times. “We tried all the basic communication skills, and it helped for a short while, but then some crises or another would knock us off track”, Sruly told us. Shani said, “Is this as good as it gets? Are we doomed to fight forever? Are we just hopelessly allergic to each other?”
Shani and Sruli are a smart, motivated couple. They want to be happy. What gets in the way of them having constructive and calm communication? It is interesting that Sruly and Shani use the term “allergic”, because in a way, they are right. Somehow, they trigger in each other an almost physical reaction and they lose control.
Malka came to session without her husband, Duvid. “He thinks I have the problem and refuses to come to therapy”, Malka tells us. ”But he just doesn’t get it. When things don’t go his way, he isolates himself and pulls away from me. I ask him what’s wrong and he won’t tell me. Then, all of the sudden, he blows up and acts like he hates me. Later on he apologizes and says he didn’t mean it. He just doesn’t understand that you have to talk about stuff to make it better. I try to get through to him but nothing works.”
Duvid really believes Malka is the problem. This is because when Duvid feels hurt or betrayed in a relationship, his coping style is to isolate himself and nurse his wounds. He tells himself he is patient and forgiving, and that is what he tries to do, until he explodes with rage. He says, “I say things I don’t mean when I am angry. Malka should not be so sensitive.
The above two relationships involve people who try their best to get along, but unbeknownst to them, are under the influence of powerful and instinctive forces that make it almost impossible to have calm and rational communication.
Trauma can be defined as a scary, frightening event in a person's life that causes some kind of lasting negative effect, such as high anxiety and fright when the person thinks about or is reminded about what happened. For example, a person who was in a car accident or a victim of a violent crime, may afterward be afraid to drive or walk on the street alone, or have recurring nightmares.
While this is a classical definition, many people suffer from more subtle traumas as a result of being repeatedly exposed to frequent and harrowing and stressful situations. People who had verbally abusive parents or witnessed emotional or physical violence in their childhoods may experience serious and negative side effects in their relationships without being aware that it is trauma induced. In this series, we will discuss how trauma affects relationships and what kind of treatment is effective in reducing traumatic responses.
Why is it that some couples keep falling into terrible fights and conflicts? When they are calm and everything is going smoothly, they will admit the fights may be about relatively trivial matters. Each spouse may resolve to be more patient, more calm and more courteous in the future, yet somehow, it eventually unravels once again into a horrible hurtful fight. These couples may be under the influence of powerful and instinctive forces that make it almost impossible to have calm and rational communication. Many people suffer from subtle traumas as a result of being repeatedly exposed to frequent and subjectively harrowing and stressful situations. People who had verbally abusive parents or witnessed emotional or physical violence in their childhoods may experience serious and negative side effects in their relationships without being aware that it is trauma induced. In this series, we will discuss how trauma affects relationships and what kind of treatment is effective in reducing traumatic responses.
How Trauma Affects the Body and Mind
The human mind has a number of layers and centers of function. There are layers that operate the same as is in the brains of animals, employing instinct without advanced thought, and then there are layers that operate via intellect. When facing an immediate danger, in order to survive, the human mind has an "emergency bypass system" that overrides conscious thought and reacts instinctively. Imagine if a bus is barreling toward you at 60 miles per hour. At that instant, conscious deliberative thought is a liability. You need to respond immediately without wasting time and resources on abstractions. Today, thanks to MRI technology, researchers are able to actually see how during moments of acute stress and danger, the brain bypasses the Frontal Lobes (used for advanced thought) and directly activates the Amygdala (used for instinct).
As part of the survival emergency response mechanism, when a person experiences trauma, the body becomes conditioned to react to events that are similar to the original trauma. The mind is highly adaptable and learns to react more and more quickly to perceived environmental dangers. This is very useful if you live in a jungle or a war zone, but a lot less helpful in ordinary every day life. The mind, however, does not distinguish well between one kind of stress or another. If a person was hit by a car, it is possible that whenever a car comes close, the person becomes anxious and panicky. This response is involuntary, and as a result of the trauma, the animal part of the mind has encoded the memory of car buzzing by as a potential threat and shifts into emergency overdrive whenever something from the environment triggers it.
When the emergency system is triggered, adrenaline pumps, and the heart races. At that moment, the intellectual function of the brain is bypassed and is not possible to think calmly, engage with people, or plan for the future.
People who have been repeatedly exposed to trauma, fall into this state more easily, more rapidly and more deeply. They also disassociate from the present, and lose the ability to empathize with others or focus on what is going on around them. Their minds are fully focused on the immediate perceived threat. In addition, because the animal part of the brain is in control, persons who enter trauma states can be impulsive, physically violent, or less than rational. This is known as traumatic hyperarousal. It is obvious how this can affect relationships in a negative manner. We will discuss this more next week in part three.
In relationships, it is helpful to think of trauma responses as a kind of allergy. Just as an allergic person has a reaction that is extreme and out of proportion to an irritant, so too people who have been exposed in their childhood to verbally violent or high stress interactions may develop a trauma response or allergy to similar encounters. The mind does not distinguish well between one kind of stress or another, therefore interpersonal stress and trauma such as abuse is almost as likely to trigger a trauma response as being shot at in a war zone.
All couples fight. This is absolutely normal. However, more or less, healthy couples find ways to soothe themselves, stay calm, and work it out. On the other hand, when people who have experienced interpersonal trauma in their childhood begin to fight and argue, they can lose all ability to stay calm and rational. Even though one or the other could simply apologize warmly and be reassuring, the panic response kicks in and, quite literally, they lose their minds. Intellect is no longer in control and the animal part of the mind is in overdrive. Shouts and insults fly, and things quickly spiral out of control. This is how trauma affects relationships.
In our work with couples, we try to give people immediate and proven communication tools and techniques so that the fighting is reduced and a feeling of warmth and connection increases. With many couples, a few sessions are quite sufficient to help everyone get back on track. However, there are a significant minority who are unable to follow the techniques. They agree that they should follow them, and they understand what they need to do emotionally, but one or both spouses lose control too frequently.
Sometimes this is due to personality disorders that interfere with rational perception and the ability to perceive and process what is going on from a balanced perspective. However, another cause is this trauma response, wherby one or both spouses become triggered by things said or done in the present that are similar to previous childhood interpersonal injuries. This causes the emotional pain and subsequent reaction to be blown out of proportion. On the other hand, the person experiencing the trauma response does not feel it out of proportion at all. One spouse may be triggered by criticism, another by emotional abandonment. In those situations, the spouses may need individual therapeutic work as an adjunct to marriage counseling to help reduce their emotional reactivity and help them stay calm.
Treatment for Trauma Induced Relationship Difficulties
Couples or parents who believe that they become hyper aroused or over reactive during difficult interpersonal situations can benefit from two simultaneous courses of treatment. First, they need couples or family therapy to learn appropriate communication and conflict reduction skills, empathy and emotional regulation. Secondly, they also can benefit from a course of trauma treatment to “re-wire” past neural networks and make them less reactive to patterns that normally trigger their trauma responses. This can be done via a treatment protocol known as EMDR, which involves a specific method of reliving the traumatic memories while allowing the body to reprocess them in a manner that is not overwhelming. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation such as visually following an object that is moving back and forth, repeated tapping, lights or sounds in a manner that alternates from the right to left sides of the body and back. Although not fully understood, it is theorized that the bi-lateral stimulation allows the person to keep focused and process the memory from both the right and left side of the brain. The right side of the brain is the logical, linear part of our minds, while the left side is more emotional and impressionistic. The memory pattern can become less reactive when both sides of the brain experience and integrate these memories without falling into emergency mode.
Torah Sources for Trauma
Even though the concepts we discussed about trauma are logical and self-evident, it is always interesting to see Torah sources that support psychological ideas. The Chumash describes trauma when Hashem warns about the terrible suffering and military defeats that will befall the Jewish people if they stray from the path of the Torah. The verse states: "The noise of a rustling leaf shall cause you to run in terror." (Vayikra 26:36) The Torah tells us that the Jewish people will be so traumatized from previous violent actions, that even the sudden and startling noise of a leaf rustling will cause people to run away in fear. This is a classic example of trauma hyper-arousal, meaning that small innocuous events become magnified and trigger a panic response. Furthermore, in Gemara Nedarim (65a) we learn that after Tzidkiyahu witnessed the horrifying act of watching Nevuchadnezzar eat a live rabbit, he felt an unbearable compulsion to divulge what he saw, despite swearing that he would not. Tzidkiyahu may have experienced a trauma and needed to connect with another person to be comforted and calmed. This course of action was ill-advised and had terrible consequences for Tzidkiyahu since he violated his oath to King Nevuchadnezzar. (Admittedly, Rashi offers a different explanation for why Tzidkiyahu needed to talk about what he saw, and this trauma pshat is a novel interpretation.) These sources seem to indicate that when people are emotionally overwhelmed by events that they cannot handle, they will tend to react impulsively and irrationally.
EMDR and the Torah
One is obligated to bring a thanksgiving offering (Korban Todah) after being subjected to a life-threatening situation (see Rashi, Vayikra 7:12.) Part of the sacrifice process involves waving the offering in front of the person. Although this is a fanciful stretch of the imagination, could it be that while meditating about the traumatic event and thanking Hashem for being saved, the process of waving functions as an EMDR technique to help the person recover?