Why Chaos Felt Like Chemistry: Healing Trauma in Relationships
Note: In my experience, inner safety is not possible without external safety. I was able to focus on healing from past experiences because I had stability, support, and my basic needs met. I was also in a privileged position, with the time and resources to engage in therapy and healing work. In other words, if you're struggling to heal while in survival mode, you're not doing anything wrong. The conditions are.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, I’ve been reflecting on relationships—not only romantic ones, but also relationships with family, friends, and ourselves. While this piece focuses on my experience with romantic relationships, it’s important to emphasize that non-romantic relationships can be deeply regulating, reparative, and identity-affirming. They can also reflect unhealed patterns—though often without the same intensity or stakes.
Valentine’s Day often reinforces narrow ideas of love that can feel alienating or invalidating to many. The relationship with oneself—with community, creativity, or purpose—is just as real and just as worthy.
Love as Entertainment
In movies and television, we’re often shown a romanticized version of love: soulmates, grand gestures, intensity mistaken for depth. Unhealthy behaviors are framed as passion. Emotional volatility gets confused for chemistry.
For those of us who grew up with childhood trauma or live with cPTSD, this messaging can be especially damaging. When your nervous system learned early on that love meant unpredictability, distance, or fear, it becomes difficult to recognize what healthy connection actually looks like.
That’s why I’m sharing how my past experiences shaped my romantic relationships, how those patterns changed once I committed to healing, and how I eventually learned that the quality of my romantic relationships was directly proportional to the quality of my relationship with myself.
Before Therapy: Distance Felt Like Safety
Before therapy, I was in relationships—but always at arm’s length. I never wanted to lose my head or get too attached. I liked knowing I could take it or leave it. I liked knowing I could walk away at any time.
That strategy seemed to work—except I was also keeping myself tightly locked down in other ways. Only my best friend knew I wasn’t straight. Because I dated men, most people assumed I was, and I didn’t correct them. I told myself I’d cross that bridge if I ever had a special woman in my life.
Staying quiet felt safer. But it also meant nothing could fully unfold. It was just another way I kept myself closed off—from others, and from myself.
When My Body Tried to Warn Me
Then one day, I found myself in a “relationship” for all the wrong reasons. I thought it would be a mild distraction, but something shifted before I realized what was happening.
The dynamics were unhealthy from the start: a significant age gap, a power imbalance, secrecy. He accused me of things I hadn’t done, told me how I felt, dismissed what I was actually saying. Instead of standing up for myself, my stomach would knot. I tried harder to get him to believe me.
I had a dream once that I tried to end things. When I looked in the mirror, my mouth was full of bloody teeth. The body often knows before the mind does.
Eventually, I ended it. With physical distance and time, he lost his hold on me. I told myself that was it—I had learned my lesson. But I hadn't yet learned to recognize the pattern.
Recognizing a Pattern
I thought that was it—a one-time aberration. Until a very similar situation happened again with someone else a few years later. This time, it was much worse.
I had struggled with disordered eating in the past, and after the first time we slept together, some old behaviors resurfaced almost immediately. I knew this was a neon warning sign. It didn’t seem to matter.
Things were emotionally volatile from the start. I tried countless times to end it, but I couldn’t. I would crumble, give in, or worse, reach out. It felt like fate, but it was actually conditioning.
Each time my phone dinged, my stomach dropped. My body was already bracing for the argument to come. I spent so much energy trying to anticipate his reactions, soothing, and apologizing for things that didn’t need apologizing for.
I wanted to make better choices, but I didn’t know what a healthy relationship looked like. I mistook stability for lack of chemistry. I believed that intensity meant connection—that feeling deeply understood came with a price.
One New Year’s Eve, I found myself on the bathroom floor, crying. That night, I decided I had had enough. I refused to see him alone again. It wasn’t easy, but I committed to choosing myself.
During Therapy: The Shower Revelation
It was in the middle of this chaos that I sought therapy. I couldn’t stop the pattern on my own, and I desperately wanted to. Reading The Verbally Abusive Relationship helped me name what I was experiencing: I was always yearning to be understood; he was always working to be right.
As therapy progressed, I began to see how my childhood experiences were playing out in my adult relationships. With awareness came the ability (slowly and imperfectly) to make different choices.
During therapy, someone kind expressed interest—recently divorced and seemingly ready. But I hesitated. I didn’t trust myself to know if this was healthy. When I finally said yes, uncertainty followed.
One day in the shower, I had a realization that changed everything:
When I didn’t value myself, I entered relationships that reflected that lack of self-worth.
When I didn’t trust myself to make healthy choices, I was drawn to situations that mirrored that doubt. It wasn’t about blame—it was about alignment.
After Therapy: Learning to Trust Myself
It wasn’t until after therapy that I truly began to trust myself. I entered a healthy, supportive relationship. I got married.
Old patterns didn’t disappear overnight. I still had fears. I still reacted in ways I didn’t always understand. But therapy gave me the tools to reflect, make sense of my reactions, and repair.
When my spouse was still my fiancé, he traveled for work. I texted him that night and didn’t hear back. Hours passed. I woke up at 2 a.m. Still nothing. The next morning, I saw he had texted back with no apology, no explanation. Just a casual response.
I was very upset. I could feel it in my body—the tightness in my muscles and jaw. When I picked him up, the drive home was icy.
The next day, sitting in my car outside the gym, I realized the intensity of my reaction didn’t match the situation. My feelings weren’t invalid—he could have been more thoughtful—but this could have been a simple conversation. I had turned it into something big because it had activated something much older.
Growing up, my mother would occasionally not come home at night. Once, I was ready for school but couldn't leave—my sister was too young to be left alone. When my sister asked where mom was, I didn't know what to tell her. When my mother finally arrived, I asked where she had been and told her my sister had been worried. She snapped that she didn't owe me an explanation. I can still remember feeling anxious and helpless.
In that moment outside the gym, I realized I had decided long ago that I would never be close to someone who made me worry like that.
That was why I had been so angry. I later apologized and explained it to my fiancé, who met me with kindness and patience.
What Changed With Somatic Work
Therapy helped immensely, and somatic work is what tied everything together.
I still feel emotions deeply. I still reflect and analyze. But now, when I notice an emotion or unmet need, I know how to let it move through me rather than acting it out in my relationship. I can meet myself instead of unconsciously demanding my partner do it for me.
If a similar situation arose today, I would allow myself to feel the anger, worry, or fear. Once those emotions have space and attention, they don’t linger for days. The sensation might be intense but I’ve learned these waves pass when I let them.
Now, when I notice irritation (especially toward my partner) I see it as information. I take intentional time alone to sit with it. Most of the time, something surfaces: a need for connection, understanding, or reassurance. I might breathe, cry, shake, journal, or tap—whatever helps my body process what’s there.
Because of somatic work, I can tend to my inner world before things escalate. I can show up more whole, grounded, and present in my relationship. This doesn’t mean I’m never triggered or dysregulated—it means I recognize it sooner and recover with more compassion.
A Different Kind of Love Story
Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to be about finding “the one” or achieving a perfect love story. For those of us healing from childhood trauma or cPTSD, it can be about recognizing how far we’ve come in learning to love ourselves—and how that inner work transforms everything else.
The relationship I have with myself today creates space for a healthier relationship with my partner. I’m not perfect. I still stumble. But I have tools. I have self-compassion.
