Connection Couples Podcast: Healing Wounds from the Past Series

Episode 1: How Wounds Show Up

First 5 minutes:

Intro- How do would from our past show up in our present relationships. Sue Johnson, the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, wrote a book called Hold Me Tight, where she discusses 7 conversations that she suggests couples need to have to stay securely connects. In the second conversation she discusses “raw spots”. These are wounds from our past that get bumped or exposed in our current relationship.
 
Have you ever bumped a bruise that you didn’t know you had and you ask yourself, “where did that bruise come from?” You don’t know it’s there until it gets bumped. This happens with our wounds also. Our partners can accidentally bump or expose unresolved pain from our past. They can be the person who seems to cause the pain in our present, but the reality is that they are bumping residue or unresolved pain from our past that never got responded to.

Past-relational distress disorder. PRDD?? When pain from our past is unresolved and un-responded to, our body brings it back up.

Minutes 5-10:

We get injured by relationships. Our body holds that pain. Then, in our closest, most intimate relationship- those places where are body was holding pain- show up. Our partner can touch parts of our identity more than anyone else can. Our strategy to survive that pain can often be to ‘wall it off’ or shut it down. But our partner is now closer to us than anyone else and we are building safety and security, so our body is now bringing up things that need healing.

Our present partner- when there is a secure connection- can help our bodies heal, in our present, from our past pain. The question is, how does this past pain show up? Often times we can blame what is happening in our present. It can be hard to tie it back to our past pain. This series will discuss how to identify those spots and how to ask your partner to respond to.

Minutes 10-15:
A few of the markers that let you know a past wound might be coming up. Have you ever been in a cycle (example- Chad slow blinks, Angela increases energy, and the cycle plays out), that escalates more quickly than a typical cycle- and it leaves you asking, “What just happened?” It’s fast and it feels more urgent than a normal interaction.

Or maybe there was not a cycle at play, but something happens, and now because of that ‘thing’ getting bumped you are in a cycle, but can’t identify why. There is a good possibility that neither one of you knew there was a there. We’ve used the acrostic TEMP before, but considering it… the raw spot or past pain is in the M- the meaning. The trigger brings up a feeling that reminds us of a past pain.

Example- Chad was playing basketball in junior high and sprains his ankle. He is told to ‘walk it off’. Chad learns that he doesn’t need to complain about pain.

Minutes 15-20:

Locking the pain down and pushing through worked in a junior high game, but doesn’t work in intimate relationships. This shows up in our present relationship- if (Angela) notices something is wrong, it is hard to bring up because she is bringing attention to pain that he (Chad) is trying to keep locked down. It’s hard for her to respond to him if the deeper message is that he is not allowed to talk about the pain.

Another example- when our daughter switched to real food, but wouldn’t finish all the food on her plate, Chad would sometimes eat off her plate and when he did- Angela reacted. The reaction was heightened and urgent and didn’t make sense for the content that was playing out. It was a past wound from before this relationship.

These first examples aren’t the worst injuries we’ve had. These are just a glimpse at a few content topics that have shown up in our relationship that are wounds from our past where we have assigned meaning and are now reacting in our present to something from our past.

Time does NOT heal all wounds. We want to be able to identify that a wound is there and discuss the meaning assigned to it and possibly have our partner respond to it. But first…

Connect Point: In this connect point we want to see if you can identify a small thing that shows up in your present relationship that might be tied to something from your past. See if you can recognize the meaning you assigned to it and then share it with your partner.

For more information about Chad and Angela Imhoff, visit their website at: www.therealimhoffs.com