How PTSD Affects Romantic Relationships and What Actually Helps

When difficult conversations with your partner feel overwhelming, when you need to resolve things right away or you need space to process, when a look or a tone shift sends your nervous system into overdrive, that's often PTSD showing up in your relationship. It doesn't mean you're broken or that you're the problem in the relationship.

There's a learnable process for managing your symptoms so they don't manage you. You can find the moment between what triggers you and how you respond. You can stay connected to your partner even when your nervous system wants to fight, flee, or freeze.

In this episode of The RISE to Intimacy, I'm walking through what happens in your body when you're triggered, why PTSD impacts romantic relationships the way it does, and the specific steps that help you notice and name emotions before they take over. I'm also sharing how my partner and I have learned to navigate this together. This is about taking ownership of your healing and learning practical regulation skills that actually work.

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1:45 – ​​How my PTSD symptoms show up in the context of romantic relationships

4:16 – Why PTSD impacts romantic relationships (and a quick disclaimer before diving deeper)

5:46 – Common PTSD triggers that cause the nervous system to go into survival mode

7:40 – How learning to slow down internally can transform relationship conflict patterns

9:49 – The difference between character flaws and nervous system survival responses

13:09 – The moment between the stimulus and the response and how to find it 

14:35 – What it really means to “feel your feelings” without being consumed by them

Mentioned In How PTSD Affects Romantic Relationships and What Actually Helps

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Full Transcript

Welcome to The RISE to Intimacy Podcast. I’m your host, Valerie McDonnell, and for over a decade, I’ve worked as a sex and couples therapist because intimacy used to feel really overwhelming for me. I felt a lot of pressure to perform, I was disconnected from my body, and I often felt like desire was out of reach for me.

But through my own trauma work, I stopped checking out of my body and started feeling connected to it again. I learned what it’s like to experience intimacy without fear, without shutting down, and without numbing out. Now I’m on a mission to help you do the same thing.

This podcast exists because trauma doesn’t get the last word. You can learn how to calm your body, change the story you’ve been carrying, and rebuild real connection, first with yourself and then with the people you love. Let’s begin.

On today’s episode, we’re going to talk about PTSD in the context of romantic relationships. This episode is not only inspired by my clients, but also inspired by my partner, whose birthday it was this past weekend. So happy birthday to him. The reason I bring that up is because both my partner and I have been diagnosed with PTSD in the past for much different reasons. This is also something that I commonly work with, with both individuals and couples in my private practice, which is how to manage your PTSD symptoms in a way that doesn’t push your partner away or escalate into conflict or essentially just lead to disconnection in the relationship.

Even though I teach this often, I’m highly educated on PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder, and I’ve been working with PTSD for more than a decade now, I still at times struggle with managing my PTSD symptoms. So for me, the way that mine show up in the context of romantic relationships is in past relationships, I’ve struggled with what we would consider to be an anxious attachment style, which for me looks like if I think my partner’s communication has changed with me, or I feel them pulling away, or I might be questioning their intentions, I want to talk about it and get it resolved instead of giving them time to process if that’s what they need.

So in my current relationship, that is something that we initially struggled with because my partner’s tendency is to need to take time to process when a conflict arises or a disagreement, or at first really when we needed to just talk about feelings. That has gotten a whole lot better. But a common pattern here is someone that tends to have an anxious attachment style or struggles with anxiety that is rooted in the fear of abandonment very often has a partner whose attachment style is in conflict with that, whereas they might shut down or they just might need time to themselves to process a situation, a conversation that their partner really wants to go ahead and discuss and have it resolved and feel connected again.

So even though you could be well-versed in attachment styles or trauma or PTSD as I am, there are going to be times when you’re triggered, and your response to your triggers might be very different than your partner’s. What is very helpful is knowing a clear way to break that pattern so that when that happens, you can stay connected instead of becoming disconnected. This is something that my partner and I have now learned, and we typically communicate in ways that work well for us now and keep us connected.

So why does PTSD impact romantic relationships? Well, if you don’t, first off, know what your triggers are and therefore know ways to respond to them that don’t escalate in conflict or, again, don’t push your partner away, don’t cause you to dissociate and therefore maybe not remember some of the events that are occurring, then this can cause disconnection. However, there really is a practical path to breaking these patterns, and that’s what we are going to discuss today.

Quick disclaimer about all this. Even though I’m talking about being diagnosed with PTSD, where you can have symptoms that then you feel like are causing arguments or conflicts or disconnection, that is not me saying that it’s your fault that you have PTSD. I’m not saying that you’re automatically always the asshole in the relationship. However, just like I have learned to do, and I still constantly really have to work at how to do this and be able to do it effectively, as my partner has been learning to do more and more over the years, I’m saying that you can take ownership of this part and start taking back some of that control that you endured from your trauma. You can do this by learning to manage your symptoms instead of letting them manage you.

So when you are diagnosed with PTSD, your nervous system is stuck in survival mode. Learning your triggers becomes essential because they activate the brain’s cycling mode, which might feel like spiraling. It can be dissociating when you are not fully present in your body. For some people, when they experience that, they really do not remember the conversations they were having or the places they were or people they may have interacted with, or also dropping into primal defenses instead of staying in the logical brain.

Common triggers might be just difficult conversations where your partner wants to talk a lot about feelings and that is something you’re not used to doing, therefore you’re uncomfortable. It feels like vulnerability, which for you doesn’t feel safe to do. Other common ones are people or places that are reminiscent of your trauma, loud noises, unexpected touch is a big one that I hear in my practice, feeling insecure about your partner’s interactions with other people, or maybe how long your partner is gone, the time frame, being ghosted or ignored. All those can be triggers.

Unfortunately, along with triggers that you might experience just at any given moment and can often feel like they come out of the blue and without notice, you will also typically be experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety at some time throughout experiencing PTSD. I always say those are the two best friends you wish never met, but they love showing up uninvited.

I believe the best way to manage your triggers ultimately will be to learn how to regulate your body in the moment of distress, which is in that moment of being triggered. However, that is a process. Even if you’re experiencing PTSD symptoms right now and maybe you are experiencing a lot of triggers, there is a way to manage them. You will not always be triggered as often or to the extent or the intensity that the trigger or the experience of the trigger feels now. Again, the best way to do that is to learn a process of regulating your body.

What that means essentially is helping your nervous system return to a calm, steady state where you can think clearly and therefore respond intentionally, not impulsively. One way you can do part of regulation instead of just regulating your body is self-regulation. However, you can also do co-regulation with your partner, which really is a core component of healing attachment injuries that are created by trauma and PTSD. This is something my partner and I have been learning to do. So we have been learning to stay steady when the other person might be falling apart or when the other person might be escalating or shutting down. That is just one way that you can co-regulate with your partner.

Co-regulation is also essential because trauma disrupts the nervous system’s ability to feel safe in connection. Attachment injuries are healed through repeated experiences of safety with another person. So when a partner shows up as steady or tuned into you and responsive, the nervous system begins to relearn trust. That is the foundation of secure attachment.

So when you are being triggered by something in the present, your brain is unconsciously activated to a memory of the past trauma. This experience for someone, and I know for me and I’ve heard from my clients, it can feel maddening and it can make you feel crazy when it happens and you go so quickly from being either calm or at least just in a neutral, let’s say a calm state, to all of a sudden either being angry or scared or annoyed or frustrated, pissed off.

When you are in that state, and as my partner was telling me the other day, he was saying when he was in that state and someone would try to talk to him, he felt like it put all this pressure on his brain, and he might respond with a harsh tone unintentionally. He would always start looking for exits because he was feeling so overwhelmed. He was saying he felt like his brain was cloudy, and he was often angry. Nothing he did was right. That really is classic PTSD physiology. That is not character flaws. PTSD activates the survival centers of the brain, pulling the nervous system into that fight, flight, or freeze mode. Again, in this state, the logical brain goes offline, the body is flooded with stress signals, and then reactions become these automatic safety responses instead of intentional choices.

So in other words, freezing or dissociating isn’t laziness or someone weaponizing silence. It’s the brain trying to numb overwhelming danger signals. And someone’s harsh tone, or yours, or irritability, or looking for an escape route, those are not someone necessarily being rude or disrespectful. They’re actually protective reflexes driven by an over-activated amygdala. The amygdala is like the alarm system of your brain. It’s constantly scanning for danger and then decides whether you should fight, run away, or shut down to survive. When it thinks something is threatening, even if it’s not, it hits the alarm bell, or let’s say the panic button, before your logical brain has time to weigh in.

Also feeling cloudy or like nothing you ever do is right, that is cognitive fog and hyperarousal that come with trauma physiology. Again, these are nervous system reactions, not moral failings.

My clients often say, when they talk to me about their experience of being triggered, when they are trying to either navigate conflict with their partner or have what might be considered a hard conversation or talk about the "problem" in their relationship, they say, “He or she said something,” or “They had this look,” or “They started walking away,” or “They stopped responding.” “I went from zero to 100 so fast that before I knew it, I was yelling or screaming or calling them names,” et cetera.

What’s happening there is they’re missing that moment right between the stimulus, right, the thing that occurs that triggers them, that reminds them of the past, and their response. So it’s like they feel like there’s no time between the stimulus and their response. Then without that pause, their behavior feels uncontrollable. Then they might notice that their partner is pulling away or starts pushing back on them. They might start fearing that they’re going to ruin another relationship. Again, they might feel crazy or say, “I don’t act like this with anybody else.” They’re desperate, really, to stop feeling like the villain in the relationship.

You really can learn how to find that moment in between the stimulus and the response. It starts with being present in your body. What I mean by that is being able to notice emotions that arise in your body before they explode, naming them, identifying them, and then what therapists always love to say, “feel your feelings.” But what that means is being able to stay with that feeling just long enough for it to shift, right? We’re not trying to push it away. We’re not overly engaging with it, and we’re not overly resisting it. As they say, “Whatever you resist persists,” and that is very much a true thing when it comes to what we’re discussing today.

What can help you? First, noticing your emotions. In other words, checking in with your body, literally asking yourself at any given moment of the day, “What am I feeling right now?” It shouldn’t be “fine” or “good” or “bad.” It should be something like calm or restless. It could be disappointed. It could be hopeful. It could be excited. It could be desperate.

Then when you do that part, these are moments when you’re not currently activated, meaning triggered, meaning therefore already in the process of just trying to survive, and therefore you can’t really have this conversation with yourself. You’re checking in with your body, noticing your emotions when you’re not activated, and starting to retrain your brain in that way because you’re going to repeat that behavior over and over again. Therefore, when the really big emotional surge that typically comes with being triggered, yes, it might come again, but it won’t feel as intense, or it’s going to continue to decrease. You’re going to keep doing this over and over, and it won’t happen as often.

So that’s the first step, being able to notice emotions in your body at times when you’re not activated and therefore training your body to check in with yourself. That teaches your brain that you are safe in your body at any given time, no matter what emotion you’re experiencing.

Something that can help with the next step there, naming them or identifying them, is using a wheel of emotions. This is a very, very, very common therapy tool. You can literally Google “wheel of emotions” and find any number of them. That is really just giving you a menu to look at and expanding your emotional vocabulary. Then that will start giving you more language to know what you’re truly feeling when you are checking in with your body to start noticing your emotions.

How we learn to feel our feelings or sit with them is learning regulation and co-regulation skills.

That process, identifying emotions, naming them, and learning how to sit with them until they shift, all of that is very doable. These are all things that I teach with my clients every single week at my private practice. So if you would like to learn this process so that you can navigate and resolve really any conversation with your partner without fighting, shutting down, or sweeping things under the rug, ultimately ending in resentment, then head over to my website, risetointimacy.com, and book a consultation with me. Thanks so much for listening. Remember, sex therapy isn’t for people who are broken. It’s for people brave enough to look beneath the surface.

Thanks for listening to The RISE to Intimacy Podcast. If today’s episode resonated with you, know that healing is possible and you don’t have to do it alone. If you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating and review for us at ratethispodcast.com/rise. It really helps others find us.

I’m so grateful for all your support. You can learn more about my coaching packages for individuals and couples at risetointimacy.com. Remember, sex therapy isn’t for people who are broken. It’s for people brave enough to look beneath the surface.