How Does Childhood Trauma Impact Relationship Boundaries? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

After something personal happened last night, all I can think about today is trauma and considering this psychology podcast episode is already likely to be late going out, I didn’t want to argue with myself. I just wanted to do an episode on something I was already thinking about because what we experience in our childhood can have a massive impact on our relationships. For example, what we think a healthy relationship and boundaries look like and how we believe the social world works. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn about how childhood trauma impacts relationships, how trauma survivors can improve their relationship boundaries and a lot more useful and insightful information. If you enjoy learning about mental health, trauma outcomes and a bit of social psychology then this is a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

How Does Trauma Impact Relationships?

Not a single one of us is born with an innate understanding of healthy boundaries. We learn what boundaries are healthy and what isn’t healthy in a relationship by trying out different things, learning about social relationships and unfortunately, getting hurt along the way. All of us go through life thinking we know what healthy boundaries are until one day or one moment, we realise what we thought was a healthy boundary actually isn’t. For example, you might have a fight with your best friend and it doesn’t go the way you expected and you or your friend is hurt. Equally, you might find relationships really overwhelming and other people might believe that you’re simply too “sensitive”. Finally, and this happens to me somewhat often, you find out that you aren’t actually as close to someone as you thought and you start to feel like an outsider.

Personally, I’ll be the first to say that I find interpersonal relationships quite overwhelming at times because of my disorganised attachment style that I’m working on. As well as having childhood trauma and autism makes it difficult to do the entire social relationship part anyway, especially with neurotypical people who don’t exactly have the same communication style as me. I have no problem talking with anyone and I love forming those relationships, but honestly, it is hard for me to form deep and meaningful friendships and relationships.

Boundaries are sometimes a major problem for me because I don’t understand them. Also, I didn’t really have great role models in my life to model these behaviours from.

On the whole, we all learn in the end that boundaries are a fine balance between feeling safe and vulnerable in a relationship where we can share our authentic emotions whilst asserting our personal limits and needs with other people when we feel we need their support.

However, when childhood trauma is added into the mix, this adds additional layers of complexity into trying to understand what healthy boundaries in relationships are, because of their traumatic experiences.

How Does Childhood Trauma Affect Relationship Boundaries?

Unlike when adults experience trauma and their perception of healthy boundaries aren’t always affected, children who experience trauma are different. Since children living in dangerous, neglectful or abusive situations nearly always have their sense of boundaries negatively impacted because they have to depend on untrustworthy adults just to survive. These children don’t have any choice and as part of this survival process, a child’s brain has to do some very intense work. Especially as, Jannia Fisher (a trauma specialist) explains in her book Healing The Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors:

“When attachment figures are abusive, the child’s only source of safety and protection becomes simultaneously the source of immediate danger, leaving the child caught between two conflicting sets of instincts. On the one hand, they are driven by the attachment instinct to seek proximity, comfort, and protection from attachment figures. On the other hand, they are driven by equally strong animal defense instincts to freeze, fight, flee or submit…before they get too close to the frightening parent.” (Fisher, 2017 p. 24)

In other words, as much as a child knows their caregiver is abusive or being neglectful, the child still wants to form an attachment and bond with them because the child innately knows they need the adult in order to survive. Yet as the child tries to do this more and more, they experience a powerful and (I would say) almost horrific stress reaction that signals to their nervous system that a threat to their very survival is incoming so their body gets into fight-or-flight mode constantly.

To the child this means they learn very quickly that relationships are helpful because they are key to survival, but relationships are dangerous too. Therefore, the child adapts their perception of boundaries to fit this really weird paradox.

At the moment, I’m doing a lot of research and writing regarding attachment styles so this is really clear and tragic to read about in a trauma context.

Personally, I would love to say that this is wrong but it isn’t. Based on my own experiences of having a very homophobic social environment and a lot of other things going on in other social situations. It’s hard. You don’t know what’s safe, who to trust and you are always on edge just waiting for something bad to happen. It’s horrible and over time, you can convince yourself that it is simply safer to be alone because if you don’t let anyone in then no one can hurt you anymore.

Of course, your life gets really alone, isolated and awful if you continue that pattern of behaviour for too long.

In addition, I know we’ve never looked at Schema Therapy on the podcast before but within this form of psychotherapy, there are “mistrust/ abuse schemas” which can leave a person with more tolerance for being mistreated and have weaker boundaries. All because the person doesn’t know any different. Making it quite the powerful revelation when the person realises that healthier boundaries are actually possible.

As a result, when a child makes a connection between their abuse or neglect that causes a traumatic stress response from their brain, so they either fight, flight, freeze or attach or feign with their attachment style or sense of boundaries. This leads to five different effects on the child’s boundary style and as an aspiring or qualified psychologist it’s important to understand these boundary styles so our approach to mental health work can be more trauma informed.

Ultimately, helping us to support our clients feel safer and more in control in their relationships.

What Are The Five Boundary Styles?

As I mentioned in the last section, our mind and body have five reactions to trauma that impact how we perceive healthy relationship patterns. For example, firstly, there is the “fight” reaction where we believe we need to push our needs onto others, impose our own version of events or even attack other people if we think that it’s necessary to preserve our urgent needs. This can lead to someone becoming self-absorbed in a relationship.

Secondly, you could react with a “flight” response where your childhood trauma has caused you to have anxiety around closeness and intimacy where you always find reasons to avoid getting too close or directly expressing an emotional need. This can lead to social and emotional isolation.

In my opinion, this second point definitely fits me because it’s clear I have an anxious attachment style because I get stressed in close relationships. I find them scary and I get concerned about getting close to someone because I’m always scared they’re going to abandon me like everyone else in my life. Thankfully, this is something I’m actively working on and I recently learnt I have disorganised attachment as my main form of attachment too.

Thirdly, there is the “freeze” reaction where a client might passively detach themselves or zone out from a situation and find ways to avoid conflict. This leads the client to being impulsive, procrastinate and experience self-alienation.

Penultimately, a client might have an “attach” reaction where they are overwhelmed with a strong, painful need to be close to others but they’re always stuck feeling lonely, sad and other people might call them emotionally needy and desperate.

This is something I can partly relate too as part of my attachment style because when I do find someone I want to be close to, and this is even more true when I’m struggling myself. Yet I used to get as close as possible to someone and I didn’t want to be lonely and I did come across as emotionally needy.

Finally, a client might have a “feign or submit” reaction to other people where they only think about the other person’s needs so they degrade or they become blind to their own needs. Or they feel guilty or criticise themselves for having needs of their own.

I won’t say too much because as someone who regularly interacts with someone who fits this description. I understand that it’s a trauma response and it is just something that they have learnt, but it is hurtful and almost “annoying” to see someone not recognise this when they’re calling you out for your own attachment and boundary issues. Since when someone with a “feign or submit” reaction does recognise their own needs and they stop supporting the other person without warning because they didn’t realise how much they were degrading their needs. It’s hurtful and it really sucks.

How To Cope With Boundary Styles Using Positive Self-Talk?

As a result if we’re ever working with a client who might fall into one of these five reactions, even though they are likely to have a single main or dominant reaction but still dip into the other types of boundary styles depending on the situation. It’s important that we help clients to learn how best to cope with their boundary styles, in addition to any trauma work that needs to be done.

Therefore, there are three things that clients can do to help themselves with their boundary style. Firstly, they can use journaling with a sense of curiosity and control as a way to track their relationship patterns. I’ll be the first to admit that you will be blind to your relationship patterns because they are so normal for you and you don’t know anything else. As well as you often only realise that you have unhealthy relationship patterns because someone has pointed it out to you. Yet if a client doesn’t have access to someone who will point it out to them, they can use journaling to identify their feelings around staying present with emotions in relationships. And clients could explore what not submitting or feigning would be like for them. Also, they could explore the thoughts and feelings that going against their boundary style brings up. So the client can ultimately find out what they are most afraid of when it comes to changing up their boundary style.

Secondly, it’s critical that clients learn to trust their body. This was a major part of my sexual trauma counselling because your body, your senses and your nervous system are a brilliant tool to help you survive and it picks up on so much more information than you even realise. Yet your body is the first thing that will tell you when your boundary style is being triggered so you can trust your body and learn from it. For example, if you enter a certain situation and you start feeling dread, anxious and like you’re going to get shouted at or punished. Then notice these signs and figure out where you learnt them based on your trauma. Then you can identify areas to work on.

For me, at times my boundary styles can be triggered when I get close to people because I’m scared they’re going to hurt me, betray me and I’m going to lose everything again like I have in the past. I never want to go through all that pain, suffering and conflict ever again.

Finally, clients can use self-talk to cope with their boundary style because after a client has noticed and identified their triggers. They can start talking to themselves and instead of being your scared traumatised child self, they can show themselves compassion, love and attention as an adult that the client might never have received as a child.

Internal Family System Therapy is essentially built around this idea and I have some experience with a few techniques from this therapy because of my private counselling in 2023. I found it really helpful.

Clinical Psychology Conclusion

On the whole, when it comes to childhood trauma, or as I found out last night all forms of trauma, it will affect you in a million different ways. It will affect you from your relationships, your attachment styles, how you relate to others, your mental health, perhaps your ability to work and so many more areas.

However, just because childhood trauma causes you or your client to have a certain boundary style, doesn’t mean you’re messed up, you’re doomed or you can’t change. The traumatised part of yourself is still inside you, it will be scared of being close to others because you don’t want to risk going through your childhood again. I understand that, and that’s okay. It really is.

Nonetheless, you’re an adult now. You don’t need to depend on neglectful or abusive adults anymore, and what you really need, what that child part of you really needs, is for you to compassionately care for that child part. Provide it with the love, comfort and reassurance that you probably never received as a child.

Once you realise this you can and probably should work on it in therapy with a trained trauma informed mental health professional. They can help you work through your trauma and most importantly, how to safely manage your relationship boundaries so you can grow and thrive instead of just survive.

Here are some questions at the end of this psychology podcast episode:

·       Have you ever experienced childhood trauma?

·       Do you or anyone you know fit into one of these boundary styles?

·       How could you identify any triggers or situations that activate your boundary styles?

·       Could you find a mental health professional to help you work through this?

I hope you enjoyed today’s developmental psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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Developmental Psychology: A Guide To Developmental and Child Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

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Have a great day.

Child Psychology References and Further Reading

Erozkan, A. (2016). The Link between Types of Attachment and Childhood Trauma. Universal journal of educational research, 4(5), 1071-1079.

Fisher, Janina (2017) Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation. Routledge.

Fuchshuber, J., Hiebler-Ragger, M., Kresse, A., Kapfhammer, H. P., & Unterrainer, H. F. (2019). The influence of attachment styles and personality organization on emotional functioning after childhood trauma. Frontiers in psychiatry, 10, 643.

MacDonald, K., Sciolla, A. F., Folsom, D., Bazzo, D., Searles, C., Moutier, C., ... & Norcross, B. (2015). Individual risk factors for physician boundary violations: The role of attachment style, childhood trauma and maladaptive beliefs. General Hospital Psychiatry, 37(5), 489-496.

Skinner-Osei, P., & Levenson, J. S. (2018). Trauma-informed services for children with incarcerated parents. Journal of Family Social Work, 21(4-5), 421-437.

Valeras, A. B., Cobb, E., Prodger, M., Hochberg, E., Allosso, L., & VandenHazel, H. (2019). Addressing adults with adverse childhood experiences requires a team approach. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 54(4-5), 352-360.

Walker, Pete (2013) Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Yilmaz, H., Arslan, C., & Arslan, E. (2022). The effect of traumatic experiences on attachment styles. Anales de Psicología/Annals of Psychology, 38(3), 489-498.

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