Do you sometimes feel a bit short-changed in your relationships?
When you think about your relationships do you tend to give more or receive more?
The quality of your relationships has a powerful impact on your nervous system. The traumatic experiences you hold in your nervous system will often show up in your relationships.
This is why reciprocity is so important in relationships when healing trauma. Reciprocity is give and take – the mutual exchange of energy and support.
Whether this takes the form of communication with talking and listening, or caring for someone and being cared for. It’s about fairness and includes consideration of another person.
As humans we are hardwired for connection – it is biologically essential to our survival. We crave co-regulation (the process of calming, soothing, or energising your nervous system through connection with another person), so that we can feel a sense of safety and belonging, especially when we’re having a difficult time.
A relationship that lacks reciprocity may look like one person investing more time, energy, effort, emotional or financial support than the other.
At different times in relationships, it might mean that one person requires more support and the other is able to give it, for example if the person is unwell or going through a particularly challenging time, and at times like this you’d adjust your expectations of what the other person is able to give.
But if the balance of give and take is out a lot, and a pattern begins to emerge where one person’s needs are always prioritised over the other, this can leave you feeling drained, lonely, isolated, and it activates your survival instincts (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn).
You might find yourself being drawn to what’s familiar, not what’s healthy. You notice that you do things for them, but you can’t say they always do the same thing for you.
You’re the only one who puts work into the relationship and you keep trying your hardest, but over time, you begin to question your worth and believe that your needs aren’t important enough.
You might make excuses for their behaviour – they’re always having a bad day or going through a difficult time and so you dismiss your own feelings.
The connection will be missing and you’ll feel emotionally exhausted and burnt out. Relationships without reciprocity often end up with one person feeling taken advantage of and used. This typically leads to resentment.
When you’ve been through trauma, your nervous system is primed for survival, not safety. Maybe your learned survival response was to withdraw from people and try to fathom it out on your own. Or maybe you needed to take care of others in the hope that it would prevent them from hurting you. Appeasing (fawning) also becomes a strategy to handle unsafe social and community situations.
A lack of reciprocity can reinforce old wounds
An imbalanced relationship can reinforce old wounds: not being seen, heard, or supported. So boundaries are necessary and extremely healthy in relationships, because you matter too. Your time, your care, your energy – it’s all valuable.
If you are in relationships that lack reciprocity and you begin to set boundaries, your partner, friend, or family member may not respond well to them. If this occurs because you are requesting reciprocity and asking for your needs to be met too, take it as a sign that your boundaries are absolutely necessary!
Healthy relationships are built on reciprocity. They are a two-way street, where both people give and receive support, time, care, effort and are willing to compromise. Reciprocity is essential to building trust, support and connection.
Your nervous system is formed by your past experiences and traumas, but it can be transformed by your present experiences, particularly through safe and nurturing connections.
We heal trauma when we are in reciprocal, co-regulatory relationships where one nervous system can lean on another from time to time for support.
This helps your nervous system to move from being stuck in survival states (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) to moving towards being able to regulate your emotions and connect back to yourself with compassion, as well as connect with others.
Being in relationships where there’s give and take helps to gently rewire your nervous system. It teaches your body that it’s safe to rest, receive, and trust.
If you would like help with healing trauma and improving the quality of your relationships please feel welcome to contact me: