If you’ve read my earlier blogs, you know I believe most trauma happens when we are young, before our brains are powerful enough to process senseless cruelty. Every year from birth to puberty sees remarkable changes in the kinds of information we can handle and how we process it. Many people want to believe if their partner would just see their experiences rationally, they should be able to “get past” their past and behave “normally.” If you could somehow use your mental perspective from today to see the past differently that would probably help. I don’t think it works that way, though. It’s like trying to tighten a screw with a fork. I mean they just work so differently that you can’t expect it to work very well. Besides, that’s kind of like throwing the baby out with the bath water. All of that stuff IS YOUR PARTNER. It’s just packaged a little different, that’s all. Alright, if you accept relying on their powerful. grown up mind to fix things won’t work, what hope is there? Your partner’s therapists and doctors have all kinds of tools available to them to access the remote workings of the mind. All of them probably work at least some of the time. The professional’s challenge is to do it in the one hour segments of their appointment book. As their partner, you are there when the reactions surface on their own. This is huge. Unlike everyone else, you are there because you want to be with them. It’s not your job or your career. It’s about your partner. There is something about them that you need and want. Many of your partner’s reactive processes will find this attractive. All of them are likely to find it terrifying. That’s right. Somebody that wants them and thinks they are a good thing is so out of synch with how they see the world that they can’t let that in. You will find this maddening. At least at first. And probably later on, too. It’s not easy, but by being there with them during their reactivity, their experience starts to shift from the terror in their brain to the safety of your arms. Don’t get me wrong. You are not your partner’s therapist or doctor, but what you can provide, nobody else in the world can do. And what you get is something nobody else can ever have. Enjoy!