How the Trauma of Childhood Abuse Affects Interpersonal Relationships, and How to Begin Healing

Human beings are innately social beings. From the time we are born, our identities and our ability to make sense of the world around us are continuously shaped by our social interactions. The most significant of these interactions typically occur in early childhood, when attachment to others—particularly caregivers—first forms.

“Attachment is the emotional bond that is formed between objects in order to establish a sense of security and safety,” explains psychologist Dr. Graham A. Barker. A secure attachment provides:

• An internal feeling of security even in the presence of distress
• Confidence in your ability to engage with the world around you
• A stable sense of identity and the ability to understand the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of both yourself and others

In other words, secure attachment creates a solid foundation for understanding yourself and others, fosters healthy self-sufficiency and positive interactions with others, and strengthens your resilience. It acts as a kind of psychological template that guides both current and future experiences, informing your emotions, beliefs, expectations, and ability to form subsequent healthy attachments throughout life.

In early childhood, secure attachment develops within loving, nurturing, and stable relationships in which your emotional and practical needs are met, offering a kind of oasis in times of distress. However, when your early childhood experiences are marked by abuse, your ability to form such attachments is disrupted, resulting in attachment injury. This is particularly true if your caregivers—especially your parents—are the perpetrators of abuse. However, abuse by anyone at these critical developmental stages can compromise attachment and strip you of the benefits of these secure bonds. This, in turn, can have profoundly damaging effects on every aspect of your life and especially on your future interpersonal relationships.

In the absence of secure attachments, survivors of childhood abuse often develop dysfunctional attachment styles that disrupt your ability to interact with others in healthy ways. This is true of all forms of abuse, including physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. In fact, contrary to what many assume, researchers have found that emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse are more strongly associated with interpersonal distress in adulthood than physical abuse. However, it is important to remember that any abuse survivor can experience profound interpersonal difficulties, including:

• An inability to trust: The ability to trust others is a critical part of forming and maintaining healthy relationships. When someone has experienced childhood abuse, however, that ability is often diminished or even removed altogether. As a result, you may be reluctant to engage in honest and open relationships for fear that you will be betrayed or harmed. By staying closed off, guarded, or hypervigilant, it can be difficult for others to feel close to you and you deny yourself the opportunity to form healthy and meaningful bonds. The lack of trust also affects all insecure attachment styles.
• Avoidant attachment: Some people who do not experience the benefit of secure attachment in childhood decide—consciously or unconsciously—to avoid attachment to others altogether. While this is often driven partially by an inability to trust others, it also arises due to the extreme self-reliance many survivors of abuse have to develop at critical developmental stages; if you have learned from an early age that you cannot rely on others to meet your attachment needs, you may decide to ignore those needs or attempt to meet them yourself. In adulthood, this typically translates to social avoidance or the formation of emotionally distant relationships in which you remain unresponsive to the needs of others.
• Ambivalent attachment: Many people who experience childhood abuse develop an ambivalent attachment style, particularly if the abuser oscillated between responsiveness and neglect. “If this is your attachment style, you likely desire lots of intimacy and are ever watchful of change in your relationship, sometimes to the point of paranoia,” explains Dr. Andrea Brandt. “You may feel like you’re more devoted to [others] than [they are] to you, have low self-esteem, and show a high level of emotional dysregulation.” These patterns arise from the unpredictability and anxiety that marked your formative social experiences, often resulting in deep insecurity and clinginess in relationships. But while you may feel an overwhelming need for connection, you may also become easily frustrated and resentful, particularly if you feel misunderstood or vulnerable.
• Disorganized attachment: People who experience disorganized attachment are deeply fearful of relationships while simultaneously craving emotional closeness. You are at once afraid of intimacy and of being alone. As a result, you may lash out if you feel ignored or unloved while at the same time being reluctant to show affection for others. These patterns create significant barriers to forming and maintaining healthy relationships and are compounded by poor emotional regulation skills, difficulty understanding social cues, and deep distrust of others.

People who experience childhood abuse are vulnerable to developing mental health disorders that compromise emotional and behavioral stability, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and borderline personality disorder. These illnesses can present additional challenges to engaging in healthy interpersonal relationships.

The diminished ability to participate in stable, mutually satisfying relationships can have significant consequences for abuse survivors. Not only do attachment needs continue to go unmet, you are also vulnerable to engaging in destructive behaviors and relationship dynamics that cause additional damage your psychological health and further disrupt the potential for healthy attachment formation. This is particularly true if you are drawn to individuals who, as Dr. Grant Hilary Brenner describes it, “fit [your] traumatic identity.” As a result, you may surround yourself with emotionally unavailable or even abusive people or find yourself engaging in co-dependent relationships. This may not only “lock one into [your] old identity while preventing new identities from taking root,” it can also lead to traumatic bonding or retraumatization that create further emotional damage.