Unhealed trauma is a major cause of relationship challenges, from minor arguments to ruinous divorce and women are the ones to initiate it.
Fact: Women initiate about 69% of divorces.
Fact: People with a history of trauma often experience more relationship difficulties and higher rates of breakup and divorce.
You can draw your conclusions, but it’s clear that unhealed trauma is an undeniable burden on the heart. These are wounds, scars, and emotional baggage people carry in their minds from the negative experiences they’ve had in the past.
Women and men often respond differently to unhealed trauma, and this can make it really difficult to build a relationship.
Here are some of the behaviors that can reveal unhealed trauma in a woman.
Excessive Need for Control
An excessive need for control, where a woman wants her fingers on every little thing that goes on around her, is a clear sign of unresolved trauma.
If you’re in a relationship and your woman always insists on making all the decisions—from what to eat for dinner to how to spend weekends—and micromanages everyone around her, giving detailed instructions for even simple tasks, she might be dealing with past trauma.
You’re dealing with a woman who has suffered for being vulnerable and helpless in the past, and she believes taking charge of things is the only way to stop bad things from happening again.
This behavior can make it hard for her to build a relationship with you, even if she loves you.
Relationships require trust and cooperation. She doesn’t trust you yet if she’s still trying to control everything.
It’s just a matter of time before you feel you’ve had enough and start avoiding her or becoming distant, which only reinforces her belief that she needs to stay in control.
So, watch how your woman tries to dictate and take charge of things, sometimes appearing bossy.
Does she struggle to let others make decisions or often take over tasks, even when unnecessary?
Does she get anxious or upset when things don’t go her way?
Is she always giving instructions or corrections, even for minor things?
More often than not, it’s not a character problem; it’s a hidden trauma that she might not even realize.
Unpredictable Emotional Outbursts
Do you always see your woman yell, throw things, and threaten to bring down the house when she’s pissed off?
Does she get very angry or very sad over small things?
Does she have a hard time calming down once she’s upset?
Does she switch from being happy to sad quickly and often?
A clear sign of unhealed trauma to look for in a woman is intense and unpredictable emotional outbursts.
Off-the-chart reactions to simple, everyday situations that leave you wondering why she’s having such strong emotions can be a sign of hidden trauma.
For example, she loses her temper over minor issues, like a change in plans, and has difficulty calming down. She cries, yells, or even withdraws completely.
Most times, these reactions are out of proportion to the situation.
You feel like you’re constantly walking on eggshells because you don’t want to trigger another outburst.
All of these are mostly evidence of unhealed trauma unconsciously dictating her behaviors.
Excessive Need to Please People
If your woman has an extreme need to please you or other people, this behavior might be influenced by unresolved trauma.
She has this unexplainable desire to do everything to make you happy, going overboard even when it causes her pain because she feels it’s the only way to earn your love and affection.
She’ll put you first, ignore her feelings and needs, and go the extra mile to avoid anything that might lead to conflict while struggling with the contradictions inside her.
There’s nothing wrong with your woman making you happy, but it becomes a problem if she’s doing it out of fear of losing your love.
She could be coming from a past where she felt unloved before and now does everything to avoid that pain.
So, watch to see if she always tries to make you happy, even when she’s not happy herself.
Does she never disagree with you?
Does she avoid sharing her views and opinions?
Does she rarely say “no” and always put others first?
If you notice this, you can help by being supportive. Encourage her to share how she really feels and let her know it’s okay to disagree sometimes.
Let her know you love and value her for who she is, not just for what she does for you. This can help her feel more secure and start to heal from her trauma.
Extreme Independence
If your woman, or any woman, tells you she doesn’t need a man for anything, she’s probably been hurt in the past by relying on a man.
She might have seen it happen to her mother or another woman close to her.
To avoid seeing herself in the pain and frustration she experienced or witnessed, she’s learned to be completely independent.
Research shows that people who experience abandonment or betrayal develop a strong sense of self-reliance as a defense mechanism.
Even when she meets a man who knows how to take care of her, she doesn’t want to let down her guard because she thinks, “They’re good until they’re not.”
She’ll insist on doing everything herself, refuse help, handle all her own problems, and make sure she never has to depend on anyone else.
Make no mistakes, it’s her way of coping with the trauma of unmet expectations from the people she once loved.
Relationships are about giving and receiving support, and there’s nothing wrong with asking your partner for help when you need it.
If your woman never lets you step in, it creates a distance in the relationship where you’ll always feel unneeded or unwanted.
Notice if she’s always insisting on doing things alone, even when she clearly needs help.
Does she reject offers of help or get uncomfortable when someone tries to assist her?
Does she avoid sharing her problems or asking for support, even from close friends and family?
If your woman constantly acts very independently, she’s dealing with unresolved trauma.
Emotional Numbing
Have you ever shared the good news with your woman, like finishing a course or getting a promotion, and she shrugged it off passively?
Do you have a bad experience and she acts like nothing happened?
One of the subtle signs of hidden trauma in a woman that’s often missed is emotional numbness.
This is when she doesn’t feel or show her emotions. She turns off her feelings to stop feeling hurt, but it also stops her from feeling happiness, love, and excitement.
When something happens that should ordinarily make her happy, she feels uninterested, indifferent, or even unresponsive.
For instance, she doesn’t get that much excited when you plan a surprise for her on her special day. If something bad happens, she doesn’t show much concern.
She might avoid talking about her feelings or change the subject when emotions come up.
You can’t build a relationship if there’s emotional disconnection.
If she can’t share her feelings or respond to yours, it only creates a distance between you. You’ll always feel like she doesn’t care and she, in turn, will likely feel isolated because she can’t connect with you emotionally.
She can’t comfort you in your sad moments and may not express so much excitement when you hit a milestone.
It’s important to understand that she’s not a bad person. It’s just the way her past has primed her to respond to certain experiences.
Avoidance of Intimacy
Women with unhealed trauma are usually too scared of intimacy and try to avoid it at all costs.
They keep a distance from deep emotional and physical closeness.
They’re often reluctant to engage in deep emotional conversations or physical affection.
They struggle to open up about their feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Conversations often stay on a surface level, and they avoid deeper, more meaningful topics.
If you’re in a relationship with her, she would try to avoid physical touch, such as hugging, holding hands, or kissing. She’ll always seem tensed or uncomfortable when close physical contact is unavoidable.
You may also notice inconsistent communication. Sometimes she’s very engaged, and other times she becomes distant or unresponsive.
When the relationship is starting to deepen that’s when she’ll suddenly develop cold feet, want to slow things down a bit, or pull away completely.
The reason is simple: She’s afraid of the vulnerability that comes with intimacy.
Without emotional and physical intimacy, the connection might feel shallow. These behaviors will affect her ability to build a healthy relationship.
She’s probably afraid that things will go wrong if she takes the relationship seriously like it happened to her in the past.
Every Woman Avoid This Mistake
If you have unresolved trauma from as a woman, whether from your own experiences or things you witnessed, it’s important to heal.
If you don’t work through these issues, you can pass them down to your children and continue the cycle to the next generation.
Children often adopt certain behaviors without realizing they’ve inherited emotional challenges from their mothers.
Researchers have studied how a mother’s unhealed trauma affects her ability to respond to her baby and how this can impact the baby’s attachment and development.
When a mother hasn’t dealt with her own trauma, it can make it difficult for her to be sensitive and responsive to her child’s needs.
This lack of sensitivity and responsiveness can contribute to insecure attachment in the child.
In one study, researchers interviewed 47 first-time mothers during pregnancy to assess their attachment style.
Later, these mothers returned with their babies when the babies were 11 months old to evaluate the babies’ attachment using a specialized test.
The researchers compared mothers with unhealed trauma to those without.
They found that mothers who had unresolved trauma often had insecure attachment styles themselves. As a result, these mothers were more likely to have babies who also exhibited insecure attachment patterns.
Attachment patterns are how you feel about and relate to people who are important to you. They affect how you see relationships and handle your emotions.
However, there was a positive exception: mothers who actively worked on understanding and resolving their trauma (a process called “reorganization”) tended to have babies with secure attachment.
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