5 Ways Childhood Trauma Affects Relationship Boundaries

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Nearly everyone shares the experience of, at some point in life, realizing that healthy boundaries aren’t what they thought they were. A personal conflict with a friend, coworker, or romantic partner doesn’t go the way you expected, and someone is hurt. Or you may realize you aren’t as close to people as you see others being, and start to feel like an outsider. Or maybe you feel overwhelmed by relationships, and people think you’re “too sensitive.” We all make our way on the journey of learning our own best boundaries.

We learn that boundaries are a balance between feeling vulnerable and feeling safe as we share our authentic emotions, and asserting limits and needs with others when we feel the need.

For those who experienced childhood trauma, clinicians have outlined five common patterns of interpersonal boundary experience. Each boundary experience is a part of our unique story and can be matched to the brain's traumatic stress responses.

How Childhood Complex Trauma Affects Boundaries

When adults experience trauma, the experience may not necessarily impact their sense of boundaries. Childhood is different, however. Children living in abusive, dangerous, or neglectful situations are in a tough spot: They must depend on untrustworthy adults to survive. They have no choice. In such a situation, the child’s brain does some intense work to get by. Janina Fisher, in her book Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, brilliantly pulls together childhood research on trauma to explain:

When attachment figures are abusive, the child’s only source of safety and protection becomes simultaneously the source of immediate danger, leaving the child caught between two conflicting sets of instincts. On the one hand, they are driven by the attachment instinct to seek proximity, comfort, and protection from attachment figures. On the other, they are driven by equally strong animal defense instincts to freeze, fight, flee or submit…before they get too close to the frightening parent. (Fisher, 2017 p. 24)

That is, when a child has an abusive or neglecting caregiver, they have a strong instinct to bond with them, as a matter of survival. But they are also faced with powerful stress reaction signals to manage the survival threat coming from the same person they are bonded to. What this means is, in a complex trauma situation, the child learns, in a nonverbal way, that relationships are both helpful and dangerous, and they need to adjust with a boundary style that fits such a paradox.

Often, this scenario leads to what in schema therapy we call the mistrust/abuse schema, which can leave a person with weaker boundaries and more tolerance for mistreatment, since, in their mind, it’s always been that way. It can be a revelation that more healthy boundaries are possible.

Fisher, in her book, and Pete Walker, in Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, make connections between the brain's traumatic stress responses (fight, flight, freeze, feign, attach) and attachment and boundary styles in relationships. By understanding a trauma-informed approach to your own boundaries, you can open up a path to feeling both safer and more in control in relationships.

5 Boundary Styles

Five reactions our body and brain have to trauma also translate into how we experience relationship boundary patterns:

1. Fight: Pushing your needs onto others, imposing your version of events, attacking others if necessary to preserve your urgent need. Can drift into self-absorption.
2. Flight: Anxiety around closeness and intimacy; always finding reasons to avoid getting close or directly expressing emotional needs. May lead to social and emotional isolation.
3. Freeze: Passive detaching, “zoning out,” and finding ways to avoid conflict. Often leads to self-alienation, procrastination, and impulsiveness.
4. Feign/Submit: Only thinking of others' needs, degrading or being blind to one’s own, or feeling guilty and self-critical about having needs.
5. Attach: Feeling overwhelmed with a strong, painful need for the other; stuck feeling sad, lonely, emotionally needy, even desperate.

How to Cope Using Self-Talk

If you’re considering how one of these boundary patterns may fit you, bear in mind that for some, one particular pattern may be clearly predominant, while many flip into more than one style, depending on the scenario. So, it may be best to consider these five patterns as a kind of kaleidoscope rather than a “pick one.” Bear in mind that if you went through childhood trauma, it’s likely you will benefit from work with a trauma-informed therapist as you build self-help skills.

These steps will help with each of the five styles:

1. Trust your body. Your body will tell you your boundary pattern is triggered. You can start there. Anxiety, feelings of dread, and feeling like you’re “going to get in trouble” are all signs. Mindfulness meditation is excellent for this.
2. Use a journal to track your patterns. If you notice that you have a “flight” style, what would it mean not to flee? Journal your feelings around staying present with emotion. What’s scary about being present? If you have a “fight” pattern, how would it feel to let others express their point of view? What thoughts and feelings does this bring up? With each of the five patterns, you can ask yourself, when in this mode, What are you most afraid of? Journaling brings a sense of curiosity and control to your self-experience.
3. Use self-talk. Once you notice you are feeling some kind of triggering or activation, and that feeling of fear we discuss in step two, talk to yourself. Be your healthy caring adult self, speaking to the traumatized child part. A self-talk journal is great practice, and you can learn more from my book.

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Remember, no matter what boundary style you have, it’s about the feeling of risk or danger of being close, and that feeling (what I’m calling the child part) needs your help. Your healthy, caring adult mode can talk to your triggered self and provide comfort, reassurance, and a plan for how to safely manage a boundary.