Healing as a Couple When You Both Have Trauma: Skills to Regulate Emotions, Identify Triggers, and Thrive Together in Your Relationship

A compassionate guide to achieving mutual trust, safety, and togetherness.

Trauma can negatively influence all aspects of a relationship--from emotional and physical intimacy to financial and physical health. These difficulties can manifest in a number of symptoms, including fear of rejection or abandonment, unhealthy boundaries, or an inability to accept love. Being in a relationship with a fellow trauma survivor multiplies these challenges, making it even harder to articulate and fulfill one another's needs. What you both need is a safe space to heal and build a thriving relationship--together.

In this powerful guide, a clinical psychologist and trauma expert synthesizes proven-effective therapies to bring immediate, trauma-informed relief to couples who share the collective weight of suffering. Working together, you'll develop emotion regulation skills for cultivating a relationship built on mutual safety, trust, and togetherness. As you acknowledge your commonality, you'll become more comfortable and compassionate toward each other. You'll also pick up skills to protect you both against common perils like anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and sexual dysfunction.

Learn essential skills to heal as a couple:

• Set healthy boundaries
• De-escalate when things get heated
• Feel less stigmatized
• Heal generational trauma

By understanding one another's struggles, you and your partner will gain a new perspective on your relationship, enabling you both to truly connect and begin the healing process. If you're ready to transcend your trauma and cultivate the relationship you desire, pick up this book and start your journey together.

Aimee Daramus, PsyD, has been a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago, IL, for almost ten years. She has worked with people who have trauma and chronic mental illness for more than twenty years in psychiatric facilities, day programs, and private practice. She is author of Understanding Bipolar Disorder, and cohost of the Bi-Polar Girl Beyond podcast.

Foreword writer Sherrie D. All, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who is passionate about empowering people to use their brains brilliantly to live better and love better. A trained neuropsychologist, she is owner and director of the Chicago Center for Cognitive Wellness.