Forgiving Injuries
Hold Me Tight: Forgiving Injuries
Throughout the course of our lives, everyone goes through their own traumatic events – things that once they happened, we were never the same. Even if the event was something as simple as taking a bad fall off of a bike, it can impact us in ways that we may not even realize. After a painful fall that left you with lots of cuts and bruises, you may be hesitant to get back on that bike and once you do, your confidence and sense of safety on it won’t be the same as it once was.
Professional clinical psychologist and couple’s therapist Dr. Sue Johnson argues that those same traumas can exist in the more private sphere as well, particularly among couples. These specific kinds of traumas are called relationship traumas, and they are moments that can cut us so deeply that our sense of security and the relationship itself never seems to be the same. Even if it’s a seemingly small and insignificant incident, in the wrong moment it can have overwhelming power to overturn the way we view our relationship entirely.
It always seems to be the people closest to us that have the power to hurt us the most, and relationship traumas happen when a partner lives out that idea.
Most of the time, these traumas happen when one partner is in need of an emotionally supportive response during a period of stress and anxiety, and the other partner brushes them off, failing to provide the emotional support that they need. Imagine getting fired from a job that you love, and rather than feeling comforted and supported by your partner in a moment of need, they tell you not to be so upset and redirect the conversation to looking into new jobs you can apply for. This is one instance where a relationship trauma can occur. In a moment where all you really needed was a shoulder to cry on, your partner instead told you not to cry, and to “buck up and move on”.
This kind of emotional – or lack thereof – response to your concerns and stresses can crumble the sense of security that you once felt in your relationship, and the hardest part is, that the other partner usually doesn’t even know that they’ve had this impact on their loved one. This is because, most people don’t really know how to decipher what attachment needs their partner has, and they do what they think is best, or what they would want in that situation, and the feeling of betrayal and abandonment subsequently falls on their partner remains a mystery.
Because it’s such a mystery, most of the time partners try to handle these traumas by ignoring them, hoping that over time they’ll subside, but scars don’t heal, they only fade. A key concept of emotionally focused couples therapy is that the only way out of these kinds of attachment injuries is to confront and heal them together. The first goal to get to this point is forgiveness. The wounded partner has to forgive the other person for hurting them, and the injuring partner has to forgive themselves for what they did to their loved one, which is extremely hard to do for both sides! In order to get to that point, you have to take your partner’s hurt seriously, even if it may seem trivial to you. You have to both get to the root of the issue and why the incident unfolded in the way that it did. To make things easier, use Dr. Johnson’s Six Steps to Forgiveness, and soon you’ll be able to renew the trust that you once had in one another.
The hurt partner needs to describe their pain openly and simply, focusing on how it affects their sense of safety with their partner.
The injuring partner has to be emotionally and mentally present, and they need to be able to acknowledge that their partner is in pain and that they played some part in it.
Both partners have to stop employing the concept that the incident will “never again” happen, and they instead have to be able to adapt if it ever does happen again
The injuring partner has to at this point take ownership of how they injured their partner, at the same time expressing regret for having done so
A “Hold Me Tight” conversation (refer to previous blog post) can now take place, centred around what happened, and what the injured partner needs to get closure
The couple now moves forward, creating a new story that describes the event – both how it happened and how it impacted trust and connection
Once this forgiveness conversation has taken place, the two of you will be able to move forward as a couple with a greater sense of what it means to be a team, and as more injuries happen, you’ll both be better equipped to deal with them as they come. They won’t have as much power over either of you, and that’s definitely something to celebrate.
There’s no such thing as an injury-proof relationship, but your dance will become so much more graceful and passionate if you know you can recover from stepping on each other’s toes once in a while. Visit Relationship Counselling Toronto to learn from professional relationship counsellors how couples therapy can help your relationship get stronger and safer.
