When your partner has experienced complex trauma

When someone has been through complex trauma, there are layers to the healing process. I want to briefly unfold the two significant parts of that process in hopes that it may help you gain clarity and empathy for what your partner may be going through as they attempt to heal. 

1) First, there's the obvious - the emotional aspect.

This includes accepting and processing the deep emotional hurt the person experienced. Essentially, acknowledging "this happened to me."

The amount of time this takes ultimately depends on the person - their readiness to acknowledge the trauma, their maturity, level of support, personality, and how that person deals with emotions. 

Although people who experience complex trauma can experience deep and fulfilling healing, there will never be 100% wholeness on this side of Heaven. Meaning, there will be times they are triggered by something in the past. Healing becomes evident in how the situation is handled, how long it takes them down, how much time they are triggered, and how long they go in between provoking episodes. 

I've seen people do some incredible work who can tell they are experiencing significant healing because rather than being triggered daily, they experience it just sporadically. 

 2) The deeper (often hidden) aspect - their identity

This includes acknowledging and processing how the trauma shaped them to be the person they are today.

I firmly believe every aspect of abuse is an injustice. But one of the most profound things it robs a person of is their very being. Abuse takes your unique soul and obliterates it. 

In abuse, you lose your voice, your unique individual qualities, and your very personhood. It inundates every area of your life and robs you of the essence of you. It's hard to make decisions, how to know what you like/dislike, or how to even trust your thoughts. 

This is an important concept to understand because healing from abuse is a life-long process of re-learning things you should have already been taught. 

For example, how to have boundaries, manage stress, or express your feelings. Someone who grew up in a toxic, abusive home wasn't taught how to live healthily. Instead, they had to learn how to create defense mechanisms for survival at a very young age. 

Instead of learning how to deal with conflict in a relationship, they taught themselves crafty ways to avoid it. They had to learn to survey a room and gauge other people's mood to know how to act. There is no freedom to exist and be oneself in such an environment. 

Abusers often use the very elements that make a person themselves against them.

i.e., the narcissistic mother uses her child's empathetic nature for her gain. 

Perhaps, because of the deep shame of the abuse, the victim often learns to relate to others through contempt. Rather than being known and allowing themselves to be loved, they will use contempt as a protection shield. 

There are many other ways this could play out. The idea behind this is to allow yourself to exercise grace. Your partner didn't ask for his or her life. They didn't grow up trying to develop defense mechanisms to make their lives more complicated. It was a necessary task for survival. 

I see the defense mechanisms that abuse victims taught themselves as a gift that comes straight from the heart of God. He allowed your partner to learn these things to preserve his/her heart.

But at the end of the day, no human can completely squash their longings. So be patient. Your partner is not only learning skills they should have been taught long ago; they also have to learn how to reconnect with their basic human longings and lay down the very defense mechanisms that helped them survive for so long. That, my friend, is an extremely vulnerable and courageous thing to do. 

As the partner of someone going through this, you are put into a unique position. God is allowing you to have a front-row seat in seeing his magnificent work in this person's life. To love this person in and of itself is a calling from God. It's not easy. Anyone who's experienced complex trauma and has a little bit of humility will admit to this. 

But your patient endurance and commitment to love this person is the biggest blessing you could give them. 

For the victim of abuse, to be known is extremely scary. And by you being available (not perfect) and choosing to love this person has the power to alter their life. 

Your courage and bravery show up differently than your partners but are equally as necessary. Your compassionate endurance will have an eternal impact.