#210: Can You Heal in a Relationship That Constantly Triggers You?
If you’re doing deep inner work while in a relationship that feels like an emotional minefield, you’ve probably asked yourself this question:
Can I actually heal while being constantly triggered?
It’s such an important question—and one that doesn’t have a neat, black-and-white answer. But let’s explore it, because understanding the difference between healing through your triggers and being stuck inside them is key to knowing whether a relationship is helping you grow or holding you back.
Triggers Aren’t Always the Enemy
It’s completely normal to feel triggered in your relationship.
In fact, our romantic relationships are meant to bring old wounds to the surface.
They touch the deepest parts of us—the parts that wonder, Am I enough? Will you leave me? Can I trust you? Do you really see me? These are the same questions we once asked (silently or otherwise) in childhood, and they resurface in adult love because that’s where we’re most vulnerable.
So, no—being triggered doesn’t mean your relationship is unhealthy.
It means you’re human.
When you have the safety, tools, and awareness to explore those triggers with curiosity rather than shame, they can become powerful portals for healing. They show you where you’re still carrying pain and what’s ready to be integrated.
When It Becomes Too Much
But here’s the other side of the coin: there’s a difference between a relationship that invites growth and one that keeps you in survival mode.
If your nervous system never gets a break—if you’re constantly walking on eggshells, hypervigilant, or anxious—your body doesn’t have the safety it needs to heal. You can’t soften or open when you’re always bracing for impact.
Think of it this way: we can only heal in an environment that feels safe enough.
If you’re trying to work on trust while your partner is still breaching it, or if you’re trying to calm abandonment fears while your partner disappears for days at a time, that’s not a healing environment. Your system is simply responding to ongoing instability, not overreacting to something in the past.
In that case, your triggers aren’t just echoes of old wounds—they’re signals that something in the present isn’t right.
Questions to Ask Yourself
When you’re unsure whether your relationship supports healing or hinders it, pause and ask:
Is this trigger about the past—or the present?
Am I reacting to something that’s happening right now, or is this pain from an earlier experience being re-activated?Is there repair after rupture?
Every couple has conflict, but healing happens through repair. When issues arise, do you both take responsibility and work through them—or does the cycle repeat without resolution?Do I feel emotionally safe?
Do I have space to express myself without fear of punishment, ridicule, or abandonment?Am I collecting more evidence of my old wounds—or rewriting the story?
Are my experiences reinforcing painful beliefs like “I’m not enough,” or helping me see that I am worthy of love and safety?
Your honest answers can help you discern whether your relationship offers opportunities for growth or simply keeps your nervous system on high alert.
When Healing Within the Relationship Is Possible
Growth is possible—even in triggering relationships—when both partners are willing to show up and do the work.
You can heal with someone when:
You both engage in open, respectful communication.
There’s genuine effort to repair after conflict.
You each take responsibility for your patterns and triggers.
There’s a shared sense of commitment—“I’m in this with you.”
When a relationship has that foundation of safety and trust, even difficult moments become opportunities for deeper understanding. It’s not about never being triggered again—it’s about learning to meet those moments with awareness, compassion, and mutual care.
When It Might Be Time to Step Back
Sometimes, though, love alone isn’t enough.
If your relationship constantly leaves you anxious, fearful, or depleted—if there’s little repair and no sense of emotional safety—it may not be the right container for your healing right now.
That doesn’t automatically make it a failure; it simply means your system needs stability to recalibrate. You can continue your healing journey outside the relationship, creating the safety within yourself that you weren’t able to find there.
The Bottom Line
Healing and relationships are not mutually exclusive—but healing requires safety, honesty, and repair.
Triggers can be teachers, but only when they come in manageable doses and within an environment that supports growth. When we feel secure enough to stay present through the discomfort, we can begin to rewrite the stories that keep us stuck.
But when the environment keeps reinforcing our pain faster than we can heal it, the most self-loving thing we can do may be to step away.
Because healing doesn’t mean enduring chaos. It means choosing peace—within yourself, and in the relationships that surround you.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
You're listening to On Attachment, a place to learn about how attachment shapes the way we experience relationships and where you'll gain the guidance, knowledge, and practical tools to overcome insecurity and build healthy, thriving relationships. I'm your host, relationship coach Stephanie Rigg.
[00:00:23]:
And I'm really glad you're here. Foreign hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, we are talking about whether you can heal in a relationship that constantly triggers you. So I think this is one that a lot of people ask themselves. And it makes sense because when we're doing the work, we're trying to become more secure within ourselves, but we're in a relationship that feels like a bit of a minefield. Like we're constantly coming up against triggers and playing out unhealthy dynamics, maybe having the same conflicts over and over again and wondering whether that's keeping us stuck or facilitating our growth. And I think that it's a really great question and it's an important one that unfortunately doesn't have a neat and clean answer.
[00:01:17]:
But in today's episode, I'm hoping to share some thoughts around why it's not necessarily a bad thing to be triggered in our relationship, and that sometimes triggers can be gifts and mirrors, pointing us towards. Towards the things within us that are maybe unresolved and that need our attention, but also looking at when a relationship might be too triggering for us to be able to meaningfully shift those patterns. So, as always, I think there's a healthy middle, there's a sweet spot, and I'm going to be giving some guidance and thoughts today around what that might look like and how you might make that assessment in the context of your own relationship, on whether it's too much, too much stress, too much overwhelm, too much arguing, too much conflict, such that it's keeping you stuck as compared with maybe it's actually a beautiful opportunity into growth and deeper connection. So that's what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. And I do hope that it resonates with a lot of you who might be grappling with this, because I know that it's a pretty common one that a lot of people ask themselves. Before we get into today's episode, I did want to mention I kind of always forget that I have this resource, but if you're in an anxious, avoidant relationship and you're feeling a bit stuck in a lot of those conflict cycles and the push, pull, and all of those things that we know can be common dynamics, There I have a free masterclass all about navigating anxious avoidant dynamics and where you get stuck and what each person should be focusing on in order to shift the dynamic. And I think the really beautiful thing about couples work is that while you can't single handedly salvage or save a relationship because a relationship is a system and it's so responsive, the things that I do elicit certain responses in you and vice versa, we can certainly change the inputs to the system by changing things on our side. So while we can't single handedly change everything and we can't force someone else to change, we can certainly have an impact on the dynamics that exist in our relationship by cleaning up outside of the street.
[00:03:28]:
And oftentimes it's only in doing that and taking responsibility for our part that we can see clearly what's still there and be much better placed to make a decision about whether it's a good relationship and one we want to keep investing in once we've cleaned up our act and taken responsibility for our stuff. So that free masterclass is a great starting point if you're in an anxious avoidant dynamic and you want to understand all of those puzzle pieces and see where your work might lie. And I'll link that in the show notes or you can head straight to my website to check that out as well. Okay, so let's talk about this. Can you heal in a relationship that constantly triggers you? So as I alluded to in the introduction, triggers are not in and of themselves a problem or a bad thing. In fact, I think we should expect that our romantic relationships will trigger us because they are our most important relationships and they are our most vulnerable relationships. All of the fears that we might be carrying the wounds from our past from earlier in life, our biggest, deepest burdens around. Am I enough? Am I lovable? Are you there for me? Can I count on you? Do you really see me? Do you accept me for who I am? These are the questions that play out in the arena of our romantic relationships.
[00:04:44]:
And they tend not to be as front and centre in our work relationships or our friendships even. It does tend to be our romantic relationships that are top rung of the ladder. And that's really what the whole body of work around attachment is about. That the infant caregiver relationship and all of the complexities of that get sort of transferred and displaced onto our adult romantic relationships later in life. And so not only is it normal to be triggered in our romantic relationships, but I think it can be quite healing if we have the Capacity and the tools and the safety to manage those triggers well, and that safety both within ourselves, meaning we know how to turn towards that and get curious and go, okay, what's this bringing up for me? What's here? What stories am I telling myself? What meaning am I making? What am I bringing to this moment that is maybe not just about this moment, but also the safety in the relational environment that we're then able to process that and repair it so that we can learn from it and deepen in our intimacy, which is ultimately what we want. And I think that really feeds into the crux of the answer to this question around can we heal in a relationship that is triggering us all the time? Which is that there is a difference between expected levels of conflict in a safe relationship and living in a war zone where you are constantly triggered and even retraumatised if you've got some heavier burdens and there's no repair happening. So you are just reinforcing the patterns that you're trying to shift away from. And I think in that latter scenario, say, for example, you have a deep fear of abandonment and rejection, and you struggle, struggle a lot with trust, and that's what you're trying to work on.
[00:06:33]:
And you are fighting all the time with your partner who is breaching trust around the accounts that they follow on Instagram, and maybe they've had a history of messaging people inappropriately and you found out about that and there hasn't been proper repair. And so you are feeling really insecure and snooping and going through their stuff, and they are deflecting and minimising and telling you that you're crazy and paranoid, even though you're finding things and there's no proper discussion about it, it just blows up and then dies down because you run out of steam and you get to a stalemate. Trying to work on your trust issues in that kind of situation is going to be really, really hard, if not impossible, because your nervous system is not going to let go of the protective patterns when you are squarely in the environment that gave rise to the need for those patterns in the first place. And I think that's essentially the question you have to be asking is, am I still dealing with the circum and the conditions that actually require me to adopt my protective stances quite naturally that call those things forward, because those things make perfect sense in that context. So trust and jealousy and snooping is a really obvious example of that. If there's been known betrayals in the relationship and there are ongoing breaches of trust, then just expecting yourself to magically become less jealous and more trusting in that dynamic, I would say, is actually not a healthy expectation or a healthy response to the circumstances as they are and continue to be. So what we really want to be getting clear about here is, is the trigger a me problem in the sense of, am I bringing legacy burdens to this moment and is that an opportunity to turn towards myself and heal something here, or am I actually reacting to what is here and now? And of course, it's not a simple inquiry, it's not going to be black and white. But I think that that is really what we want to be asking ourselves, because a lot of the time, particularly if we have patterns of invalidating ourselves, of blaming ourselves for everything, of feeling like we're too much or too sensitive, then we can internalise everything as being our fault.
[00:08:51]:
And if someone is being very reactive or disappearing for days at a time, I think that's another really good one. For the purposes of this discussion, if have fears around abandonment and your partner disappears, they get overwhelmed and go AWOL on you and you're trying to heal your abandonment fears in that environment, good luck to you. Because the circumstances are such that of course you're feeling that way, that environment is not conducive to you no longer fearing that someone could leave at the drop of a hat, because you are continually collecting evidence that that is true. So we want to be asking ourselves, am I in a container that is conducive to healing in terms of the behaviours that are going on here? And to the extent that the behaviours are not great, is there adequate repair? Or is this relationship just a series of encounters in which I am collecting more evidence in favour of all of those painful stories that I have to work so hard to be loved and people are unreliable and people can't be trusted and whatever else might be going on there. So the things that I've just been speaking to, there might be signs that the relationship is too chaotic, too unsafe, too dysfunctional, too unhealthy, too triggering for you to realistically expect that you are going to be able to do meaningful healing while still really in the arena of that relationship, that it's just too much on your nervous system. And I think the nervous system piece is a good one to mention, because we heal when we feel safe, right? We can't heal when we're constantly dysregulated. And so if you are constantly anxious, constantly stressed, constantly overwhelmed in your relationship, constantly, and conflict, that isn't going to be conducive to healing because they're just different modes. And so we do want to be able to feel like there's sufficient regulation.
[00:10:45]:
And again, it doesn't mean conflict free, as I said in the introduction, triggers a part of it. And conflict can be absolutely part of it. Rupture and repair. But the repair is key there and that's what brings us back into safety and allows us to really make progress in terms of our own growth and healing. So without that, if we're just doing the rupture and no repair over and over and over again, then that's going to be really hard for us to shift out of our patterns because our patterns feel so important in that kind of environment. Now, on the contrary, some signs that you can do healing work in that relationship and that while it might be bringing up some stuff, maybe it's still productive or facilitative of growth. I think a really key one is that you're both really willing and able to work through challenges together as they arise. So it's not one person completely shutting down and pulling away and refusing to engage and not entertaining any discussion of what's wrong.
[00:11:44]:
And like as soon as you bring it up or as soon as you're upset about something, they turn their back on the conversation and they don't revisit it at any point. Again, that's going to be really hard because that's all ruptured, no repair. And your system is naturally going to feel unsafe in that environment because there is no emotional safety. I think repair is absolutely paramount to having trust and safety in a relationship. So without that that you're really going to struggle. But having a partner who you can have hard conversations with and you can both own your stuff and be honest and reflective, I think that that's a really positive sign. Even if it exists alongside triggers and conflict. I think another really good sign is that you are developing or you already have the ability to self regulate and resource yourself through those triggering moments.
[00:12:34]:
So if you don't have any of those tools and you're completely spinning out and becoming very, very dysregulated, that's just a heavy to on your system, particularly if it's frequently happening. So if every other day you're having these big fights and you totally lose your centre in those moments and you don't have any capacity to self regulate, that's just going to be really weighing on your system. To be spending so much time in extreme stress and dysregulation. So having the ability to hold your centre to reflect, to communicate somewhat effectively. Even in those moments of trigger. I think that's a very different picture to the one where you. It's like all out war and you're both yelling and swearing and slamming doors. Like really high conflict kind of relationships are going to be hard to heal in because again, the burden on your system, the heavy toll of that level of acute stress is going to be really hard and can get in the way of creating enough safety and regulation for that healing to happen.
[00:13:36]:
I think another really important sign, and this makes me think of something that the Gottmans teach, which is that trust and commitment are really foundational to a healthy relationship. And here I'm thinking more about the commitment piece, which is, I think it's much easier to heal in a relationship that has a sense of longevity about it or at least that we're like both all in. If one person or both of you are one foot out the door and the possibility of ending the relationship is always lurking, waiting in the wings, that's a trump card that one or both of you pulls in conflict. That is really hard because that feels like a threat almost that if you push it too far, I'm going to leave. If you're too dysregulated, if you get too upset, if you express too many needs, if I perceive you as being too unreasonable, then I'm just going to pull the pin and walk away. That creates such a power imbalance that's really hard to. Again, that just completely undermines safety. So having a sense that like we're both in this, even though it feels really hard, we're both really committed to doing the hard things together.
[00:14:44]:
And walking away from the relationship is not front and centre as a possibility that we're both tempted by or flirting with. I think that that can really help in shifting the balance towards it being a potentially healing opportunity because it just has that steady anchor of I'm not going anywhere, I'm in this with you, that can, I think, really shift it into collaborative rather than combative, which obviously is very helpful. Okay, so I hope that that has answered this question of can I heal in a relationship that's triggering me. As always, the answer is in shades of grey rather than being black and white. But I hope that the examples I've given and those pointers have given you an overall sense of what to look for and what is maybe too much for your system to hold in terms of not having enough safety, regulation and repair for you to trust in the ability of doing things Differently. And I think that's really what it comes down to. We will only take risks towards a new way of being in relationship if there's enough trust and safety for that to happen. Because if we don't have that trust and safety, if we feel like we are under attack all the time and that there are these visceral threats, which, again, might sound dramatic, but that's what our nervous system and our attachment system perceives when we are really in the trenches and doing this work and our relationships are feeling hard and they're feeling triggering, it can register as deeply threatening to our system.
[00:16:12]:
And if there's not enough safety alongside that or underpinning that, then expecting that your system is going to willingly drop its protective mechanisms that have been in place for a really long time is just not realistic. And it's not fair to expect that of yourself, because those protective parts are doing an important job. And it's only in an internal and relational environment of trust and safety that we have the ability to soften into something new and experimental. Because with that comes risk and vulnerability. So keep coming back to this question. Is this relationship offering me an opportunity to turn towards my triggers, my unresolved pain and wounding, such that I can grow and heal through that? Or is this relationship and the dynamics that are present here reinforcing my wounds and collecting more evidence in favour of those painful stories that I might have about myself and about others? Is it doing all of that faster than I could possibly hope to heal them? Because if I'm clocking new evidence every other day or every week and having these big ruptures without repair, then expecting myself to heal in those conditions might not be realistic. So I really hope that that's been helpful. I think that this kind of situation is certainly one where therapy, whether individual or as a couple, can be really supportive.
[00:17:33]:
Because getting an outside opinion on your specific set of circumstances when you're so deep in it, that can be very, very useful. Because naturally everything is magnified and we can kind of lose sight of the bigger picture when we're so deep in the trenches. So if you're really going through it at the moment and you're grappling with some of these big questions, I really encourage you to seek out whatever support might be available to you that can help you figure out what you need and how to get there. Because it can be really hard when you feel like you're treading water and you just maybe can't see the forest for the trees. So sending you lots of love if you're in it. And I do hope that what I've shared today has given you at least a starting point to reflect on some of these tricky questions and what you might be needing in order to really take care of yourself and shift away from some of your not so healthy patterns and into something that feels a little more secure and safe within yourself and within your relationships. Okay guys, sending you so much love and I look forward to seeing you again next time.
[00:18:37]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things things, attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
relationship triggers, healing in relationships, attachment styles, insecure attachment, romantic relationships, conflict resolution, emotional safety, regulation, repair in relationships, anxious avoidant dynamic, couples work, trust issues, abandonment fears, relational environment, nervous system regulation, protective patterns, self-regulation, feeling unsafe in relationships, conflict cycles, intimacy, healthy relationships, dysfunctional relationships, high conflict relationships, overthinking in relationships, therapy for couples, communication skills, relationship growth, vulnerability, legacy burdens, emotional dysregulation, evidence of painful stories