Heal First Then Pick Your Life Partner: Relational Recovery When You Have CPTSD

You can't forgive what is still going on. I heard that line in a training this morning and it stopped me, because it explains why so many of us get stuck trying to forgive someone before the harm has actually ended, and why forgiveness, grief, and compassion are not three separate tasks but one sequence.

In this episode I walk through that sequence as I've come to understand it in my own healing and in the work I do with students:

This is no longer happening. I accept the cost of what has already happened. I grieve what I will never get, what was permanently taken because this happened. I forgive the version of me that allowed this to happen. I honor the survival instincts of the human who hurt me, and in that honoring I still hold them accountable for their actions. I take responsibility for all the ways Parts of me amplified the dysfunction. I let the other human go enough that there is nothing personal about their Parts' behavior. I know where I begin and end. I protect while I connect. I sense into there is no separation. I am love. I am loved. I am loving.

If you've been trying to forgive an ex, a parent, or a partner and it keeps not taking, this episode is about why, and about what has to come first.

This is the CPTSD podcast for adults who grew up in dysfunctional families and are done repeating the pattern in their adult relationships. I'm Dr. Tanner Wallace, former professor turned IFS Certified Practitioner, and this is what I teach inside Happily Ever After.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

You can go to therapy every week for years with the best intentions and still not resolve the thing you came in with. Most of us quit when we're tired, or bored, or when the crisis is patched up enough to live with, and then it comes back in a new form. That isn't a failure of effort. It isn't even a failure of your therapist.

In this episode I answer the question from the perspective of intervention science: what would actually be required to resolve complex trauma, and why it doesn't fit inside a standard format. Once you understand what CPTSD is, you can see clearly what resolution demands, and it isn't 50 minutes a week in someone's office.

If you've done years of therapy and are still repeating the pattern, this episode is for you. It's also the clearest explanation I've given of why I built CPTSD Medicine the way I did.

This is the CPTSD podcast for adults who grew up in dysfunctional families and are done repeating the pattern in their adult relationships. I'm Dr. Tanner Wallace, former professor turned IFS Certified Practitioner, and this is what I teach inside Happily Ever After.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

If you've ever begged someone to stay, you know the feeling underneath it: that you're a freak, an outlier, and this relationship might be the only one you ever get. Parts of you are terrified of being alone, and they'll do almost anything to prevent it.

This episode is about why that pattern is a CPTSD problem, not a character flaw, and why it hurts twice. First, when you act as if there's something to hide, as if you're spoiled goods, you keep picking partners who are more likely to blame you and leave. Then, when they do, the heartbreak lands on top of the shame that was already there, and the shame compounds.

Getting out requires two things at once: releasing the past trauma that installed the belief, and reparenting the adaptive child Parts still running harmful relational strategies to keep you from being alone. That's the individual empowerment that has to come first, before you can discern whether a relationship should end. And it matters just as much whether ending it was your choice or theirs.

This is the CPTSD podcast for adults who grew up in dysfunctional families and are done repeating the pattern in their adult relationships. I'm Dr. Tanner Wallace, former professor turned IFS Certified Practitioner, and this is what I teach inside Happily Ever After.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

If you can't leave a relationship, you can't choose it either. You can only stay by default, and a default isn't a decision.

This episode is about the milestone in CPTSD Resolution that makes real choice possible: sovereignty. Sovereignty rests on three beliefs that have to be in place before you can look at your relationship with any clarity. I'm okay no matter what. It is safe to be me. I'm worthy of love that doesn't hurt.

These are the individual empowerment prerequisites. Without them, the question of whether to stay or go can't even be asked honestly, because the answer is being decided by fear rather than by you. A lifetime of not mattering does that to a person. This episode is about what it takes to matter to yourself first, so that whatever you decide about the relationship is yours.

This is the CPTSD podcast for adults who grew up in dysfunctional families and are done repeating the pattern in their adult relationships. I'm Dr. Tanner Wallace, former professor turned IFS Certified Practitioner, and this is what I teach inside Happily Ever After.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

Standing up for yourself isn't a skill you're missing. It's a position you can't hold while Parts of you are running trauma energies to manage what feels like an attachment threat.

Survivors tend to swing between two false versions of power. On one side is grandiosity: the hero who is the only one responsible, the only one who can, proud and quietly being used; or the lone wolf who doesn't need anybody. On the other side is shame: the smallness of "I'm bad," or the disgust of "I'm not worth it." Neither is standing up for yourself. Both are adaptations.

In this episode I walk through all four stances, how to recognize which ones you're running, and three questions that trace them back to where they came from: Who did you see do this growing up? Who did it to you? And who did you do it to, with no one stopping you?

This is the CPTSD podcast for adults who grew up in dysfunctional families and are done repeating the pattern in their adult relationships. I'm Dr. Tanner Wallace, former professor turned IFS Certified Practitioner, and this is what I teach inside Happily Ever After.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

A listener wrote to me this week with a question I hear constantly from survivors of childhood trauma: how do I clearly choose what a healthy relationship is for me? She grew up in a home where the people who were supposed to protect her didn't, and built a life on the mantra that no one is coming to save her. Now, decades into a marriage that has been more about keeping the peace than being met, she's asking the questions so many of us ask: Did I choose this person because they felt safe, not because they were healthy? Is what I'm getting enough? And am I being walked all over?

In this episode I break the question down for anyone with CPTSD who is trying to choose a partner, stay in a marriage, or decide whether to leave. We cover why survivors often pick safe over healthy without knowing the difference; why "no one is coming to save me" is both a survival truth and a trap; why healing the individual wound has to come before any relationship can be evaluated clearly; and the actual markers of a healthy relationship for someone who never saw one modeled.

This is the CPTSD podcast for adults who grew up in dysfunctional families and are done repeating the pattern in their adult relationships. I'm Dr. Tanner Wallace, former professor turned IFS Certified Practitioner, and this is what I teach inside Happily Ever After.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

Bad things happen to every kid. What turns a bad thing into complex trauma is what came after: whether the adults helped you regain a sense of safety, and whether the truth of what happened could be held in your family at all. Was everyone in denial or dismissive of the bad things happening? That's why books can validate your childhood but can't resolve your CPTSD. All of this is specific to the particular bad things that happened to you and how your two biological parents responded, and that requires customized, real-world interventions. There's no one-size-fits-all with this work.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

With complex trauma, we take the blame for bad things happening in our relationships. But controlling behavior isn't a character flaw. It's what a person does when their no keeps getting overridden and they've run out of other ways to get their safety and security needs met. Yes, a lot may need to change in what you say and do in your closest relationships. It's also true that we live inside societal rules that make men more entitled to do what they want and women less empowered to stand firm in their boundaries, and that shapes the strategies available to us. If controlling behavior is your go-to, this is an episode you'll want to download and listen to.

Interested in working with me directly? www.cptsdmedicine.com

Not sure about your relationship? Is it healthy, unhealthy, fixable, or not? These are key questions many of us have, but we struggle to get answers that make sense, give us hope, and point us toward better outcomes. In this episode I walk through the CPTSD red flags in relationships that survivors miss, and the survival codes underneath them.

This is the CPTSD podcast for survivors who are ready to get unstuck and out of relationship hell. Want to work with me? cptsdmedicine.com

Often I get asked, "Why isn't this getting better?" And when I do, I often run a "Reach Inventory." This episode is a modified lecture from a core CPTSD Medicine teaching on "The Reach." Listen and see if The Reach is shaping your relationships.

Want to work with me? https://cptsdmedicine.com/

You didn't choose to be a childhood trauma survivor. That's something I want you to remember. And yet, your childhood trauma has impacted your life considerably. In this episode, I share the origins of your relationship suffering. This is a topic I am often asked to speak about and so it feels good to deliver this content to you here. I hope it brings a fresh perspective to your work, and something I say helps you finally get help that actually helps.

If you want to work with me: https://cptsdmedicine.com/happilyeverafter

Learning how to be your own co-regulator is life-changing and knowing that no one is coming to save you is the ultimate leadership amplifier, and YET those are all very individually focused milestones. Critical for initial success in your CPTSD Resolution, but not enough for comprehensive relational recovery. Up next is Relational Empowerment which is what this episode is about. As the second of two episodes in a 2-episode relaunch, I share with you some big ideas of this kind of empowerment. It is a more advanced skill to take your individual empowerment and test it in the relational field, but you learn new things about yourself, your trauma, and yourself as significant other in ways that cannot happen in individual work. If you would like to work with me: https://cptsdmedicine.com/help-with-healing-cptsd

Getting your heart broken again and again is horrific. It doesn't have to be this way for you anymore, and I would like to teach you how this exausting experience stops. In this two-episode relaunch, this episode focuses on Individual Empowerment as the first experience you need in your relational recovery journey. The good news is that CPTSD Resolution, or healing your complex trauma, is the exact process required for your relational recovery. These are entirely overlapping experiences for you, the human with childhood trauma and secondary adult trauma that led to complex trauma. If you are interested in working with me: https://cptsdmedicine.com/help-with-healing-cptsd