Skill Building— Living With Someone Else’s Trauma: Part V

Establishing safety in the relationship and upholding boundaries lays the foundation for the new skill building we are hoping to stimulate.

Both healing and healthy relationships are possible for someone who is recovering from traumatic life experiences. There are many ingredients to the healing process, and it will likely be different for each individual situation. A basic concept though, is that the behaviors associated with healing can be learned and practiced until they replace the unhealthy patterns.

Part of our loved one’s retraining of the brain requires us to balance support with accountability and to be willing to be unpopular with them at times, or even to be seen by them temporarily as their enemy.

It’s not an easy journey, but over time, as you demonstrate empathy, patience, clear boundaries, love, and accountability for learning new skills, you can enter into a meaningful relationship with your loved one. Acquiring these new skills does not happen overnight, but it is obtainable through a steady, constant repetition of reinforcement and encouragement.

It has been said that hope equates to a credible plan. If you can identify a few concrete steps forward, then there’s hope.

Understanding PTSD and related trauma disorders as a learned sophisticated defense system can help us conceptualize healing as the process of learning new, more effective skills that get us closer to our goals and values.

The process of skill building works best when a foundation of safety and boundaries is already laid. Once rapport is built, then the door is open for feedback and learning. This can be a direct teaching model as a parent or caregiver with a child, or as feedback to a peer or spouse.

Sometimes, our loved one cannot receive feedback from people they feel close or vulnerable with because the threat of getting hurt or feeling exposed is too great. In such situations, encouraging your loved one to seek professional help, read books on the topic, or support them in taking feedback from others who represent a lower relationship risk may be the best we can do to encourage skill-building.

Sometimes it is just not possible for us to be the one who is part of the active skill-building process. In that case, a trusted person outside the primary relationship may be the one to hold the healthy boundaries and help them to stay the course.

If your loved one does feel safe enough to take feedback from you and engage with learning new skills, then you can start looking for select opportunities to ask questions and offer ideas on what has worked for you.

For example, you may notice your loved one appearing moody and depressed over a perceived hurtful interaction with a family member. You may be able to first offer empathy, then ask a question that gives them space to express their feelings and experience. Having your loved one identify their emotions and the outcome they are wanting is step one.

If the conversation is going well, then the skill can be presented and encouraged. “I’m noticing you seem down today. How did the conversation with your brother go?” “That’s so hard. I can see how frustrating it was to hear him say those things. What do you think will be helpful moving forward?” “Are you open to some feedback?” or “I know one thing that really helped me with my sibling was when I pulled back from the relationship for a little while and then just focused on the positive things next time we talked. I’m still hoping we can someday really talk about the hurtful things in our relationship but for now, I think keeping the family together feels more important, especially since we only see them once a year.”

The skills you are then naturally teaching is acceptance of difficult things that are outside of one’s control and healthy detachment from unhealthy dynamics. You are also presenting the idea that maybe in the future the relationship may be changed, and that it’s okay to live with some tension in relationships in the meantime. All too often people with trauma and/or PTSD are quick to categorize situations as black and white and people as friend or foe—these two extremes need to be continually called out as the unrealistic and presumptive assessments that they are.

The most effective and sustainable way for skill-building to occur is through normal, everyday interactions. Being a loving, supportive person who is demonstrating those same skills is a powerful way to influence those around you.