ERP 148: How To Deal With The Effects Of Trauma In Relationship, With Dr. Janina Fisher
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Hi, thank you for joining today’s podcast episode. Today’s episode is 148, How to Deal With the Effects of Trauma in Relationship With Dr. Janina Fisher. Before we get started, I’d like to invite you to join me in setting the tone for today’s episode, that as we listen, as we contemplate what’s shared on the show – and today, we have a guest, and we are very privileged to have somebody that is a teacher of teachers… She trains therapists, and her experience and wealth of knowledge is giving us a very distilled, clear understanding of some of the key components when we’re experiencing trigger in relationship, and how to handle that, how to manage that.
And granted, on the show we’re getting a very snippet; it’s difficult to cover some of these really complex topics in great detail. My hope is that I’m giving you some perspective and some understanding so that you can be on the path of improving your experience in relationship and in intimacy.
To quote Dr. Janina Fisher from this interview, she says, “Relationships are the hardest thing you are going to do in your entire life.” And really, truly, this speaks to the overall intention of the Empowered Relationship podcast, and that is to support you on the path of cultivating happy, lasting love, knowing that the developmental process can be challenging in many, many ways, and wanting you to feel better prepared, more well-equipped to understand, to work with all of the things that are getting presented to you that I see as a curriculum for your growth. My desire is to support you and to help you be exposed to other teachers, to principles, practices, and resources.
If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to check out my website, it’s drjessicahiggins.com. There are many podcast episodes, show notes, as well as articles and programs that support you in deepening your experience and relationship and cultivating intimacy.
To access today’s show notes, you can visit again, drjessicahiggins.com. Click on Podcast and find Episode 148, How to Deal With the Effects of Trauma in Relationship With Dr. Janina Fisher. Let’s get started with today’s interview.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Janina Fisher is a licensed psychologist and international expert on the treatment of trauma and dissociation, author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors, and the co-author of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment. She’s also the Clinical Director of Khiron Clinics in the UK, Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, and a former instructor of Harvard Medical School. Dr. Janina Fisher, thank you so much for being on the show. I know you teach internationally and I think your schedule- you said you have five weeks in the States, and I just to feel so honored to have you on the show and just to share what you are up to and your teachings with my audience.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: For people that aren’t familiar with your work, could you start talking a little bit about your view on relationship, just for us to get a sense of where to start as far as your viewpoint.
Dr. Janina Fisher: My field is trauma and I have been part of the trauma field almost since its very beginning in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. One of the things that I realized is that people don’t know the way in which trauma has a long term – and I mean sometimes decades long-term – effect on things like relationships, intimacy, work, all of the facets of what we would consider people’s normal lives.
So one of my major interests professionally is in educating therapists in how to work with trauma, so that they can be available to trauma survivors, whether they’re experiencing internal problems, relationship problems, or just life problems.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And this is the main reason why I have been so excited to have you on the show, because I am interested in your perspective, but I tend to believe that people have injury — if we look at trauma as a spectrum, like the spectrum of intensity or frequency in a complex trauma or simple trauma… But when it comes to relationship, especially growing up in a family where parents maybe didn’t have the capacity to attune to them or provide a real secure, safe attachment…
People have these experiences in their life, whether or not it’s injury or trauma… And oftentimes, they’re just overwhelmed, and one of the things that I’ve talked a lot about on my show is attachment, but also how to create safe connection… But when trauma’s involved, I think that’s a whole other variable that many people feel really confused about in how to really create that safe connection when their trauma is getting activated… So maybe there’s a couple of things in there that you might be able to help people have some insight around.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Absolutely, because all trauma – at least all trauma that I have been able to think of – involves human beings… Obviously abuse, whether child abuse, domestic violence, very obviously relational trauma, but also I thought about war trauma. War trauma is about other human beings trying to kill us, or killing our friends and comrades. Automobile accidents, car driven by human beings, and natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina… Many, many of the survivors of Katrina talked about the trauma of people stealing their food, stealing their possessions, not helping, fighting for territory, or whether it’s food or a place to sleep… And that role of human beings in trauma means that when we’ve experienced trauma, human beings no longer feel safe, including partners, therapists, loved ones of all kinds.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: What are you looking at when you’re working or helping trained professionals who work with couples when trauma is in fact part of their history, and how are you helping this scenario with couples who maybe one or both people have had some aspect of trauma in their life?
Dr. Janina Fisher: We have to start with education, because let’s face it, marriage, like child rearing or partnership – we go into completely unprepared. There’s no training program for being in a long-term relationship or a training program for how to raise children. We go into these most important aspects of our lives without any education.
So I do a lot of educating of couples about trauma, about relationship… And I teach them the modern understanding of trauma, which unfortunately only a small percentage of therapists seem to know about, and not many survivors.
The modern understanding of trauma, based on brain science research, is that when we’re traumatized, the issue is not remembering what happened or talking about what happened, the issue and the reason why trauma has long-term effect is because we remember trauma with our feelings and our bodies. And traumatic memories are stored as feeling responses, as tensing, as increases in heart rate. Our feelings are wanting to pull away, are a hypervigilant kind of helicopter monitoring of one’s partner or child… And that’s how we remember trauma.
I tell couples that once upon a time, whenever this relationship began, however it began, that once upon a time, two wise adults saw in each other the potential to build a better life, the potential to have a life very different from what each experienced as children. But what they didn’t know, as they dreamed of this better life they were going to build together, what they didn’t know was that they were taking the trauma with them. And so often, couples will talk about that first fight they had.
I can remember a couple, and the woman partner said, “Yes, we were taking a beautiful walk on a summer’s night. I was feeling so close to him, he was feeling so close to me. We had a wonderful day together, we made love and now we were taking this beautiful walk hand in hand.” And she said, “And then another couple was walking toward us, and he immediately dropped my hand and started walking behind me.”
Now, I’m sure your listeners will recognize that is a very familiar scenario. Two couples, each holding hands, walking down the street on the same narrow sidewalk. Somebody has to give way… And her partner dropped her hand and moved just behind her, so the other couple could pass, and she felt a combination of incredible hurt and rage.
She looked at him, “How could you drop my hand? How could you leave me?” And you can imagine the conversation. He’s like, “Well, I didn’t leave you. Look, I’m right here. I just dropped your hand so that the other couple could pass.” “You left me!” And so, in a moment, they’re both arguing. And he’s saying, “I was just being considerate. I just walked behind you, so they could get past. I’m still here.” “No, you left me.”
And neither of them knowing that they were triggered, and they were experiencing feeling memories. He, the feeling memory of always being not good enough and being humiliated. No matter what he did, it was never enough. And she was remembering, again, not as an event, she was remembering with her feelings, moments when her parents were there for her and then it was yanked away and she was alone and hurt. And couples fight about those things for years. When I met this couple, they were still fighting about that fight, at probably three years after it happened. We all know that. I’m sure every one of us can think about the fight or fights that occurred over and over again for years.
So helping couples understand that they are carrying this [unintelligible 00:13:37.12] failed attachment or abuse into the relationship in the form of feeling memories. The problem with the feeling memories – you don’t know you’re remembering, you think it’s happening now. So when she felt absolutely, brokenheartedly hurt, her assumption was, “He hurt me,” not “I’m remembering being hurt as a child.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Such an important distinction.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Absolutely, and very, very hard to make. And so I talk with couples a lot about this phenomenon of feeling memories being triggered, and how it is the triggering of feeling memories that destroys relationships much more often than “bad behavior.” Elizabeth, the woman whose partner dropped her hand, would have said, “He’s a cold and uncaring person. He’s not capable of relationships,” and couldn’t understand that she was remembering a father who wasn’t capable of relationships.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Sadly, yes. So, with this education, what helps people be able to make that shift from, “You’re hurting me” to “I’m remembering being hurt.”
Dr. Janina Fisher: Well, I suggest that they make it by way of just using the language of triggering, which really requires an assumption that can be hard to make… The assumption being, “This other person, my partner, doesn’t want to hurt me.” And that can be hard for people to make if they have grown up with parents who wanted to hurt them or behaved as if they wanted to hurt them.
But most couples I’ve seen over the years want a solution. They don’t just want to be right, they want a solution. So what I said, “You guys can’t use the language of fault.” The language of fault kills relationships. There’s no way to move forward with the language of fault. The only way to move forward is with the language of triggering. And I explain to them, when someone hurts us or is rude to us or is insensitive, we have a feeling reaction. And then afterwards, we put words to it.
This is common, I would say, with everything in our lives. If you and your listeners start to notice, if something happens, good, bad, or ugly, and the first thing we feel is a sensation or emotion, and then we put words to that emotion or sensation or we try to. And often, those words are words of blame. Some people blame themselves, I was so stupid. Others blame the other partner. Or, some of us do both.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: The impulse is strong. I was meeting with a client on Friday and I had recommended her reading Hold Me Tight by Susan Johnson, and then we’re talking about shifting the languaging and looking at attachment needs… I told her, I said, “Look, I grew up in a family where my mother coached me on using “I” statements. I have an undergrad in psych, I have a masters in psych, I have a separate PhD in psychology, and I still recognize the impulse when I feel hurt to want to go towards what hurt me and kind of address that externally… And it takes a pause and a willingness to tune in to that sensation and be willing to process whatever I’m feeling to have a little bit of deeper understanding of what’s going on for me.” Still, I’m human, and everything I talk about or I try to share with people on this show, I do my best to practice and it’s not always easy when you’re in the heat of it.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Absolutely, yes. So, so true. And so, it’s a normal human phenomenon to blame the chair we stubbed our toe against, or to be angry at the chair that we stubbed our toe against. And that applies even more so to our relationships. The difficulty is that the other person being blamed can’t then support us.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Precisely, this is the catch-22. Yes, in some ways we’re protesting and we’re wanting them to see our hurt but we’re doing it in a way that is through fault and their natural impulse is to defend against that, yes?
Dr. Janina Fisher: Exactly. And certainly, it jams their compassion circuits. So, even if the other person doesn’t get angry back, it’s unlikely the other person is going to have a compassionate, empathic response, which is what we really need. And so, I teach my clients to use the language of triggering and I coach them, because often, they start using the language of triggering as a new kind of accusation…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: [laughs] Yes… Can you give of example of that? Just so we have an idea of it.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Well, it’s the tone. You can say, “I know I’m kind of quiet, but I’m really a little triggered”, or you can say, “Of course I’m not speaking to you. I’m triggered!” which tends to convey blame in a different way. So it’s hard… I said to my clients, relationships are not for sissies. It’s the hardest thing you’re going to do in your entire life. And partly, it’s hard because it isn’t enough to be right. Maybe the other person did behave badly, but it doesn’t work to use blame and shame.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Do you think that education helps people make this — it’s a brilliant paradigm shift in a lot of ways and it feels extremely transformational to invite them into this triggered language rather than the fault or the blaming… Are there things that you help couples overcome the difficulty? You’re saying it’s really hard to be able to use that language and recognize that memory, the painful memory that we’re experiencing or feeling triggered… Is there anything that helps give them hope or keys or practices that you help them, as like practicing tips or something?
Dr. Janina Fisher: Absolutely, because I do think it’s about changing habit. And when couples come to therapy, they’re usually formally entrenched in a certain habit or pattern of relating to each other, which has become a vicious circle.
So, probably the first tool I teach is the language of triggering and the concept of it. Then I teach them to be more mindful, to notice their own intentions and to notice the other person’s response from a little more mindful distance.
So let’s say I have a couple in the room and he says, in a critical tone, “She’s very distant. I understand she has a sexual abuse history, but she isn’t warm. She’s cold.” And I say to him, “Notice your intention in saying those words. What’s your hope? What is it that you’re hoping will happen as a result of saying to your wife, ‘You are cold and uncaring and distant?’” And he says, “Well, I want her to be closer.” And then I turned to the wife, “When you hear him say, ‘You’re cold and uncaring and distant,’ do you feel closer to him or do you feel less close?” And she says, “I feel less close.” And he’s like, “Really?” It’s just getting them to notice it.
I’m thinking of another couple where the wife was very attacking and critical. And I would stop her in mid-sentence and I would say, “What’s your intention here? Are you wanting him to hear you? Are you wanting him to feel criticized, properly criticized? What is it that you’re hoping for?” And she said, “I want him to hear me. I want him to understand.” And I say, “And what if I told you that if you tell him in this way, he won’t understand because he’ll be too triggered?” And she said, “Well, that’s tough, because this is who I am and this is how I talk.” And I said to him, I said, “When she tells you that you are a pathetic excuse for a husband, that she has no respect for you, what happens inside you?” And I remember her husband said, “It makes me shut down and go away because I feel unwanted.” And I think she said, “Well, I want you to stand up and be a man.” And I said, “And what’s your hope in saying that?” “Well, I want him to be a man.”
I said to her husband, “Do you feel more or less like a man?” I’m trying to help them, I remember I said to the wife, I asked her to notice if it felt better or worse when she said — the words that hurt him the most were, “I have no respect for you.” And I said to her, “Notice what happens when you say those words. Do you feel better or worse?” And she said, “I feel better. I feel like I’m standing up for myself.” And I said, “What if you told yourself a different story? What if you told yourself, I have trouble having respect for people because of how my mother treated me?” And she said, “That’s worse, because then I want to cry.”
So, it started to become clear to him and to her that she was attacking him because it was better than crying, and that what she wanted was to be heard and comforted, which obviously he couldn’t do after he had been accused of being essentially a failure as a husband.
So, I tried to help couples notice those dynamics and laugh at them. [laughs] And to get her to laugh at herself for thinking that he would be more what she wanted by calling him a loser. Sometimes, humor helps couples, as you know, and I think it saves a relationship if both parties have a sense of humor.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. It sounds as though you are providing a mirror, a really beautiful mirror that invites them to look at what they’re doing, without the alarm and without your feeling like, “Oh, this is really problematic.” You’re really helping them reflect and look at the underlying intention or desire or need, and helping them look at how they’re actually — what their strategies are. And it just sounds like a really beautiful thing.
Do you feel like couples — there are a lot of couples that listen that are big proponents of reading books and self-help… Do you feel like when they have these entrenched cycles of blame and fault and reactivity and being triggered mutually, do you feel like they can untether this in their own way of self-help? I’m curious what your thought is on that.
Dr. Janina Fisher: I do think that self-help is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I think the difficulty is that reading a book doesn’t help us when we’re triggered. We might read it and we might say, “Yes, absolutely. I see it clearly” and five minutes later, your partner triggers you and it all goes out the window. Because one of the things, and this is where I can educate my couples on too – when we’re traumatically activated, when we feel a sense of threat, the human brain and body are designed in such a way that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that thinks, goes offline. We believe that happens to make us more efficient at fighting, fleeing, or playing dead.
The only problem is if the prefrontal cortex goes offline, all your good intentions go out the window. Everything you’ve read goes out the window. So I go on the assumption that what couples need is practice. It’s like tennis. You have to learn the right way to do it and then keep practicing it. I’ve tried to give them the equivalent for relationship tennis lessons.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. And also, I would imagine too, a bio-feedback tool.
Dr. Janina Fisher: That’s a very good idea, yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, and you’re helping them recognize — because a lot of clients will talk about, like you said, “I have the best intention…” It’s almost like they think they don’t have enough willpower, but when you help educate, like you’re saying, this understanding of what’s happening in the nervous system and helping them be more mindful of what’s happening inside of them, and helping them connect with the painful experience…
That’s one of the reasons, Janina, that I was super excited to have you on the show. It’s just the way in which I feel you teach that really holds strength and holds health for the individual and the couple and the human interaction, despite the pain that people are experiencing. I think that you do such a great, great job in helping people understand the empathy and the attunement that they can have for themselves, and that that helps really build some stepping stones to be able to pair that with being able to look at the painful experience.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Right. And also, I really do believe that the capacity of each individual to soothe themselves is crucial for a relationship… Because there will be inevitably times when our partners are not in a soothing — they’re not capable of soothing us or we’re not capable of soothing them, and we all have to get through those times. So I do think the more we help couples normalize their actions and reactions…
I’m sure it’s not always popular but I say to couples, “Look, you’re both well within normal limits. There is nothing abnormal happening to you. It’s just that you are very, very different. And that’s uncomfortable.” And that’s hard sometimes for couples to hear because, let’s face it, you want to be right. You don’t want to be normal, you want to be right about the other person. You want the therapist to say they’re wrong for treating you that way. You don’t want them to say, “You’re both well within normal limits.” It’s just a question of how you agree to address your differences. Do you address them as enemies of the relationship, or do you address them as normal and natural byproducts of being two different people.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love that. I know we’re going to start transitioning where I can start to help people know how they can get in touch with your teachings and the workshops and your books… Is there anything else that you want to say as it relates to trauma and what people might be feeling in their nervous system when things come up in relationships? Is there anything else that you want to say on this interview today?
Dr. Janina Fisher: I think I often see the following scenario, when trauma is a part of the background of either couple… What I often see is that the couple’s therapist is often in the position of having to refer one or both of them for individual therapy to address the trauma. But the problem that so often – this is why I do what I do and work as hard as I work – not all therapists with experience with trauma are trained in the cutting-edge approaches.
The trauma field completely transformed in the last 15-20 years beginning in the mid-90s. At the beginning of the trauma field development, we assumed that [unintelligible 00:32:06.23] talking cure would work for trauma, that all people had to do was to talk about what had happened to them and to feel the feelings and reactions, and their symptoms would resolve.
Well, we’ve had so many, many years to discover that that’s actually not the case. And in fact, one of the things that makes me crazy is when I see on television on some program a traumatized person being told, “All you have to do is to be able to talk about it and you’ll be okay” and I wanna scream, “No, that’s not a cure.” That doesn’t help, and sometimes it makes things worse.
If there are therapists listening or people in relationships, look for somebody who has expertise in one or more of the modern psychotherapy methods, whether it’s EMDR, sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing, internal family systems… Don’t just look for a therapist who says, “I have experience in trauma.” Look for indicators that in fact this person has training in specialized methods.
It’s a bit like, you know, wouldn’t go to a cardiologist who wasn’t board certified. Or, you wouldn’t go to a cardiologist with an intestinal problem, and you wouldn’t go to a gastrointestinal specialist for a heart problem. We need to make sure that when we’re sending people for help, we are sending them for the right help.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love it, wonderful. I appreciate, again, so much, you being on the show, and again, just the work you’re doing for couples to understand what’s going on, and for them to have a path towards creating safety in their relationship.
Is there anything you want to say about how to create safety before we start wrapping up? As far as how to build steps towards safety when they are triggered. I think what you’re doing around the mirror, and really helping them recognize their intention, but also how they’re strategizing and having awareness around that is key, I imagine. Is there anything else you want to say around steps that they can take towards building safety?
Dr. Janina Fisher: Well, it’s not simple. I think the simple answer is to remember that safety starts with us, not with the other person… So that I’m focused on “Am I creating safety? Am I expressing my feelings in a way that creates safety or unsafety? Am I responding to my partner’s hurtful behavior in a way that increases the safety or decreases it?” But it’s very hard to remember in the moment we’re not feeling safe, that we ourselves have the power to increase the sense of safety. It’s hard, but it’s important. And nobody wants to hear it. We want to hear, “No, you’re right.”
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Right, help me get him to see, or help me get her to see how she is not doing this correctly. Or, she has got the issues.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Right, exactly, yes. It is hard. I remember saying once to a wife who said, “Tell him to stop it. Tell him he’s wrong” at the very first visit. And I remember what I said to her, “Well, you know I could tell him that he’s wrong, but then he wouldn’t trust me, and then he wouldn’t come back or he wouldn’t listen to me if he did come back… So, I don’t think I want to tell him that he’s wrong at this moment, because I’ll lose my power to help you.” And she said, “Oh, okay.” It was very cute.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That’s great.
Dr. Janina Fisher: Yes.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Janina Fisher, I would love to help people know how they can get connected with your work if they want to learn more… How would you suggest people reach out to what you’re offering?
Dr. Janina Fisher: I would suggest going to my website, www.janinafisher.com and checking out the resources. I have a number of papers that can be downloaded for no cost. Check out workshops and trainings I may be giving. Therapists are people that are in a relationship, too. Many individuals have the training to go to a workshop even if they’re not currently working as professionals… So, check out those, check out web-based events and see if you get some good ideas that would be helpful to you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. And I know that you’re also doing a tremendous amount of work with the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. Is that also a place that they can get trainings? What might they find there?
Dr. Janina Fisher: Sensorimotor Psychotherapy trainings are open to graduate students, as well as licensed professionals in mental health. It’s a wonderful way of working that includes attention to things like the nervous system, heart rate movement, all the things that go well beyond words and are particularly helpful when words just make the situation worse. So, they can go to the sensory motor psychotherapy website… And I think I have a number of website links on my website.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Perfect, wonderful. I’m sure people will definitely look into more of what you offer in the way of teachings and resources… And again, thank you for being on the show today. Also, thank you for all the work you’re doing and helping educate, guide, and facilitate, and really helping people heal in the way of trauma and relationship.
Dr. Janina Fisher: My pleasure. Thank you, Jessica.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s episode with Dr. Janina Fisher. Again, I am grateful to have had her on the show, as she is a teacher of teachers. And again, her perspective and wealth of knowledge in giving us some key understandings of what’s going on when we’re feeling triggered, perhaps remembering trauma, and how to engage in relationship that supports the compassionate, safe connection that we all long for.
Again, to access today’s show notes, you can visit drjessicahiggins.com, click on Podcast and find today’s episode 148, How to Deal with the Effects of Trauma in Relationship with Dr. Janina Fisher. There you will find links she mentioned, as well as the show notes.
If you have questions or want to submit a topic for the Empowered Relationship podcast, or perhaps even want to receive live laser coaching, please visit the contact page on the website, drjessicahiggins.com. There you will find all the ways to reach me, as well as a little guidance around how to submit a question for the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and how to request to be on the show and receive live, laser coaching. I’d love to hear from you. If you have any comments or feedback.
Until next time, I hope you would take great care.
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