When Close Isn't Safe
I recently completed a training with trauma specialist Janina Fisher, where I realized how much we misunderstand people with a certain type of complex trauma (CPTSD) that often initiate what I call the "push-pull dynamic."
It’s more common than you might think.
People with this dynamic are vulnerable and soft, then turn aggressive and argumentative at a moment's notice. They demand attention and sympathy, then turn cold as soon as they receive it. They want to spend time together, only to remind us exactly how we're failing and not doing the relationship right.
Sound familiar?
This looks like aching to get close and then pushing closeness away. Like longing for an intimate relationship, then self-righteously sabotaging one as soon as it starts to materialize. Like pursuing a friendship only to spark conflict and find fault when the new friend starts to draw near. Like incessantly blaming others when relationships don't work out because it's safer than taking accountability and learning how to grow.
It's easy to label someone “rude,” “needy,” or “frustrating,” without understanding that they’re behaving this way because closeness doesn't feel safe.
"What Happened to You?"
Trauma isn't a character defect. It's a predictable result of overwhelming experiences and a fear so big that we can't digest it. Our bodies store intensity as unfinished memories, which show up as physical sensations and feelings, that need to be resolved later.
Until we heal, we're stuck with old patterns that we were never meant to carry into adulthood.
Our bodies are hardwired to need other people and to be in relationship with caring, consistent others. As babies and children, we're dependent on our parents and caregivers for this care and consistency.
If our caregivers are healthy, we learn that people can be depended on to show up for us and that relationships, despite moments of disharmony, feel good. We learn how to repair, and we learn how to thrive.
If our caregivers are unhealthy, we learn how to do without care or consistency. We adapt to survive an unhealthy environment, however we can, and we carry those adaptations into our adult relationships.
What was adaptive, then, becomes maladaptive now.
If we watch Ed Tronick's Still Face Experiment with mothers and their infants, we witness the mother's face become inexpressive. As she shifts out of emotional connection with the infant on her lap, the infant instantly attempts to regain her attention, first smiling, then crying out in protest.
If the mother responds to return the smile, the baby softens, repair is achieved, and all is well.
But if the mother maintains her emotional distance and her face hardens into a glare, the baby shields their face to hide from her displeasure. The disconnection is viscerally uncomfortable.
If her displeasure continues, the baby cries angrily. If she still doesn't answer, eventually, the infant gives up — not because they no longer need their mother's care, but because they've given up on receiving it.
The entire experiment takes less than two minutes. Now imagine that same scenario and its outcome, again and again, over an entire childhood.
Neglect is not benign.
It can create deep wounding in our relational patterns that shows up in adults as the push-pull dynamic of complex trauma.
If our parents and caregivers were often frustrated, distracted, or stressed, we experienced their lack of attention and attunement as disconnection.
As children, when neglect repeatedly happens without acknowledgement or repair, we learn that connection can't be relied upon. We learn that other people, even the ones closest to us, don't feel safe.
We might toughen up and go without, turning to work and high achievement to numb the pain of not being responded to with care and consistency at home.
We might offer care to others, but shy away from receiving it ourselves, maybe telling ourselves we don’t need it because we’ve rarely had it.
But underneath the ways we learned to survive the emotional barrenness of childhood, our need for others remains a biological imperative. It's not something we can turn off or evolve beyond.
Our need to connect with others is part of what makes us human. When we are socially connected to and engaged with others, our bodies experience a cascade of powerful processes that lower our blood pressure, boost our immune systems, and regulate our hormonal balance.
It's evolutionarily adaptive to depend on others for our safety. "If they're okay, I'm okay," isn't co-dependence, but the foundation of a connected and caring family system.
But if, in childhood, our caregivers responded to us with anger or neglect, we try to self-soothe on our own. And frankly, we do a poor job of it because it's a job we were never meant to do alone. We're meant to co-regulate with others, for relaxation and relief.
Over the years, growing up, self-soothing poorly becomes our baseline and we learn to live with the constant tension of anxiety and discomfort, as if it's normal.
But it's not.
Closeness as a Trigger for Complex Trauma Flashbacks
Intimate relationships activate our childhood patterns because they involve vulnerability and dependency.
Dependency becomes risky because in childhood, closeness was unpredictable and painful.
It's understandably scary.
In this pattern, our nervous systems equate current closeness with the loneliness, panic, and despair of childhood. And until we heal the complex trauma from our past, closeness will continue to activate old wounds and launch us into endless and excruciating flashbacks.
These flashbacks look like overpowering feelings or physical sensations, often tightness or constriction in the chest, stomach, or throat.
The present-moment situation of closeness reminds our memory systems of the trauma we're holding, when closeness didn't go well in past.
The pull we feel, towards closeness, becomes intensely activating and — without choosing to — we startle into a stress response. We go into flight, flight, freeze, or fawn. We are no longer in our adult right minds, prioritizing our relationships.
We need to understand these dynamics as intense need and vulnerability. And then we need to work with — and not against — the push/pull dynamic as part of trauma healing.
How to Create Relational Safety with Complex Trauma's Push/Pull Dynamic
Here are a few steps that can create more clarity and acceptance, when you or someone you care about is caught in a flashback and closeness no longer feels safe.
1. Recognize that what's happening in yourself or the other is a flashback. This is old pain coming up to be healed. How you navigate it will determine whether it's re-traumatizing or whether you heal.
2. Take responsibility for yourself and for calming your stress response. It's stressful to be on either side of this dynamic. Your leadership will mean that the strongest nervous system wins.
3. Try to see the pain beneath the push/pull dynamic. Do your best to slow down and soften. It's just trauma — and it already happened. It’s not still happening.
4. Stay connected and protected at the same time. Contain your own experience without spilling your feelings onto the other for them to deal with. Protect yourself from caretaking their feelings, as best you can. Boundaries are healthy and you need them.
5. Set limits and speak needs with care. Slow down and prioritize feeling over content. Notice what you need and ask for it. Do your best to be generous to the other person and meet them in what they need.
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At any point, we can decide to change and embark on a healing journey to reclaim our lives.
I hope these suggestions inspire you to meet complex trauma patterns with the care and understanding we all deserve.
When we’re aware of what’s happening, we can offer a new experience of care and consistency that repatterns and heals past trauma. Together, we create a new way of being that takes the place of the old pain.
Thank you for reading.
If this pattern is something you'd like professional help shifting, I work with individuals and couples in my trauma resolution practice and have a few spaces opening up.
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Elie Losleben supports individuals and couples internationally through trauma resolution and embodied healing. She brings extensive training in somatic approaches and a deep understanding of how the nervous system shapes our capacity for connection. To learn more about working together, you're welcome to reach out.