Beyond Surviving: Seeking Fulfillment Post Relational Trauma

In this second essay of our two-part series exploring how and why relational trauma survivors get used to proverbial "scraps" of relational contact, we explore how those individuals cope with not getting all of their needs met.

How do relational trauma survivors learn to cope when their needs are not met?

We find ways of coping with our intolerable feeling states.

We find ways of attaching to something or someone else in lieu of being able to attach to those we live with.

We, quite frankly, find ways of feeling less bad.

And how do we do this?

This looks different for all of us, but common ways children and adolescents cope with their unmet hungers can include:

Attaching to food — one of the first sources of comfort — and developing unhealthy relationships with it as we seek from it what we cannot get relationally.

Attaching to achievements — throwing ourselves into academics or sports to derive a sense of worth, mastery, and permission to be alive from our accomplishments.

Attaching to unsafe others (peer sexual partners, adults with poor boundaries, etc.) who seem to offer a semblance of what we crave from parents — attention, a sense of being wanted and special.

Attaching to substances that numb our painful emotions and fog our panicked minds — alcohol, street drugs, and more.

And these are but a few ways we attempt to get our proverbial pangs of hunger met.

We cobble together a meal – scraps of what we actually need and want from our caregivers, rounded out by what we hope will be nourishment from these other sources — and we take what nourishment we can from this.

But over time, often in adulthood, the way we cobble together our proverbial meal and the ways in which we attempt to slake our thirst and ease our hungry tummy stops working so well.

How we feast may need to change

There often comes a time in adulthood when we realize that the ways we’ve attempted to “feast” or, quite frankly, get a full meal to meet our needs – cobbling together scraps, breadcrumbs, and our other attempts – stops working so well.

And then what are we supposed to do?

What do we do if those hungers never leave us even after we’ve been children and are now adults?

What do we do if we still can’t get those needs met from those who raised us or those we may have in our lives now?

Please hear me: There is still time to have a more fulfilling meal.

There is still a chance to have a proverbial meal where your needs can be met, functionally.

What do I mean by this?

There is still time to learn how to be with your feelings and not use potentially destructive and maladaptive behaviors to numb them out.

There is still time to learn what boundaries are and how to assert them so you can keep yourself safe from those who would only give you scraps.

There is still time to learn what healthy communication looks like and recognize when you’re at the receiving end of unhealthy communication.

There is still time to learn how to be in relationships with others, learn how to recognize a healthy relationship, tolerate its vulnerability, and receive nourishment from it.

There is still time to love and be loved.

There is still time to make different choices that will reduce pain in your day-to-day life once you start to see your choices and options more clearly.

There is time to build a beautiful adulthood for yourself.

How do we change the way we seek nourishment?

How do we change our pattern of acclimating to scraps, seeking out nourishment from maladaptive behaviors and others, and do the work of cultivating a healthier, more nourishing meal for ourselves?

So much of my work with clients in relational trauma recovery therapy involves helping my clients become clear on how proverbially hungry they are and how they coped to get their proverbial pangs of hunger met.

And then we work to help them stop those maladaptive behaviors that are nourishment attempts, yes, but are also misguided and potentially damaging.

We also work on increasing their capacity to tolerate the nourishment that may actually be around them (because so many of us from relational trauma backgrounds struggle to see and receive nourishment even when it is actually available.)

We work on seeking out nourishment from more healthy, functional, and adaptive sources – relationally and otherwise.

And certainly, in our work together, this can look like me modeling what healthy, secure, attuned connection can look like and then teaching the skills to help clients go out and find this in their real lives after having an embodied experience.

And sometimes – and I know this may be controversial to hear – our work in relational trauma recovery therapy may also mean making hard, strategic choices to reduce contact with or distance entirely those who only give you breadcrumbs and scraps in lieu of a whole meal.

The bottom line is this: none of us are meant to survive on scraps.

We need and deserve to have nourishing meals, satiating emotional experiences, and relationships in our lives.

Just because the breadcrumbs and scraps are familiar and normalized for you, doesn’t mean that they’re normal and functional.

Again: none of us are meant to survive on scraps.

And when we’re children, we don’t really have a choice around that.

But as adults, we do.

And exercising that choice to seek out more nourishing, robust proverbial meals is a powerful thing to do.

And if you would like help in exercising that choice through trauma therapy, the directory here on Psychology Today is a great place to find professional support.