Trauma & Intimacy and Boundaries
Trauma and its impact on intimacy and boundaries
You might recognize some of these intimacy issues:
- You are struggling with closeness, affection, or trust
- You have difficulty opening up and letting people in
- You avoid reaching out and avoid asking for yourself
- You struggle to say no or express opposition
- In intimacy, you get confused and end up feeling frustrated
- In intimate relationships, you always end up fighting or feeling misunderstood
- Emotions can be treacherous: they overwhelm, they flood you or simply are not available to you
If you recognize yourself in these statements, you might have signs of unprocessed trauma that affected your ability to be aware of your boundaries, make contact, and build intimate relationships.
Traumatic experiences leave deep traces and long-term marks in our personal history. These – sometimes suppressed in memory – painful experiences disrupt us systemically, leaving our body, mind, and soul in disarray and disconnect. By consequence, they alter us in deeper ways than we realise. Our awareness, perception, interpretation, expression, spontaneity, and ability to commit and connect get contaminated by the past and are compromised today.
