The Clingy and Desperate Ways Trauma Shows Up in Relationships: A Cry for Help

I desperately search for connection – not just friendship, but rather lifelines to pull me out of the trauma my body still lives within. I get consumed with the turmoil inside and it comes out in clingy, needy, desperate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is a cry for help – a yearning to be rescued by another person – rescued from the desperation, fear, and hopelessness of trauma, even many years later.

---

In the past 2 years, I have absorbed a wealth of information in an attempt to find healing from past trauma. I have thousands of little pieces of knowledge swirling in my head in the hope that I can MAKE ME MAKE SENSE…at least a little bit! Some of these pieces were incredible aha! moments – awareness that brought me amazing relief. You know, those feelings of — “Oh thank God! I’m not as horribly weird as I thought! It’s a trauma response – I can be explained!” These are the moments that help me let go of some self-loathing because an explanation exists.

But in this quest for understanding, I have found pieces of information that make me cringe or cry for days or just feel so freaking ashamed! These are the days I hate self-awareness because it is damn hard! These are the days that I cannot imagine working through the knowledge I just learned, especially if it will require any self-disclosure (and it always does!) to a therapist, a friend, my husband….letting someone in on the dirtiest, messiest pieces of me.

trauma and the body’s nervous system

After distressing events end, if the person cannot properly process what was experienced, with the help of others who care, the body becomes traumatized. Even years later, the nervous system remains in a fight, flight, or freeze state and the body is unaware that it is safe now. The body has no words. There is no easy way to convince a traumatized nervous system to be calm. Instead, it develops adaptations to keep you functioning DESPITE the trauma it is still fighting… you have to show up at work, be a mom, keep acting like a caring wife…or whatever your life requires of you.

The person I have become was shaped by chronic trauma — my habits, my reactions, my needs, my thoughts…. Some were from abuse in childhood, but most were from 10 years in an abusive marriage. I don’t want to own this reality, but the adaptations I created were survival mechanisms that allowed me to function through my painful world.

The hard part is that the survival behavior did not disappear after I got out, after I was no longer in trauma. These adaptations still run my life, or rather disrupt my life, constantly.

This week I gained insight into some of my behaviors and it felt dehumanizing. How can I be explained so easily? I feel defensive and humiliated.

Attach or Cry for Help Behavior

The “attach/cry for help” behavior is one of these adaptations. This is a trauma response in which the individual is desperately searching for a lifeline. They become intense, clingy, needy. It is a survival strategy. It is not a cry for comfort, but rather for connection as a means to be rescued out of the trauma (remember the body doesn’t know it’s no longer in the middle of it).

These are the people who leave endless voicemails, complain they don’t get enough of your time, or find it terribly difficult leaving your side after you spend time together. It’s never enough. It is not a personality disorder, but it sure looks like one. These individuals may often idealize the people they’re trying to connect with, including their therapists.

Please don’t pull away! And don’t try to rescue me either!

Unfortunately, this adaptation typically produces the opposite result of what is desired. To others, it feels intrusive, intense, just way too needy! People typically pull away. Yet we are built for relationships and so we keep trying, with more intensity because we are scared. The increased fear of being abandoned in our trauma adds to the desperation and we continue to cry for help.

Another common but unhelpful response to our cry for help is for the person on the receiving end to try to rescue us – they soothe us, give comfort, give advice. And we think this is exactly what we need, but it is not. And it is not the purpose of our behavior. Once we find some healing – soothing, comfort, and advice can feel amazing and help us through the process, but initially it just cannot be absorbed.

Finally, I know why I am wired this way! I was desperately searching for deep connection, for the ability to trust someone. Because my body had not left the trauma behind, I needed to know that you would absolutely not abandon me as I worked to get out of this nightmare!

just be with me

What’s happening in my body is my fight or flight response is consistently being activated by every little trigger around me. And trust me they are endless!

Because I could not calm my own nervous system I needed another person, a person with a healthy nervous system, to JUST BE WITH ME so that I could calm myself through their presence. It’s called co-regulating. And until I could do this with someone I trust, I could not do it on my own.

This is exactly why interpersonal trauma must be healed within healthy relationships. It is the only way.

I approach relationships in an almost obsessive manner. They consume my mind. And they are always one after another, never simultaneous because each takes so much of my focus and energy. Each new relationship is a glimmer of hope to my traumatized body that someone will rescue me.

The person on the receiving end of my “cry for help” usually is not equipped to connect in a healthy way and the relationship ends poorly–or at least leads to a string of regretful decisions. I have seen myself do this again and again and I hate that I do this! I am humiliated that this is me!

seeing the survival mechanism in my behavior

I have come so far! I am so much healthier than I ever was! But even now, I see these thoughts and behaviors running my life. I want to pride myself on having healthy friendships now….certainly the healthiest I have ever experienced! But still, it is hard for me to explore my inner turmoil.

That’s where I am at. I am embarrassed, ashamed (because I HATE emotions and always run far from them… and feeling needy is the worst of them all for me). But being curious about my behavior will keep me from pathologizing it. I must see it for the survival mechanism it served.

a traumatized body will find unhealthy relationships

Our strong attachment or cry for help behaviors are attempts to flee the trauma within us. This is why I have had the same behavior pattern for as long as I can remember. I strongly attach to someone that seems to be stronger than me – seems more intelligent, more worldly, more badass…someone who would have fought the man who abused me because I could not…but instead these people I attached to further stimulated my fight or flight activation.

Romantic relationships were no different. Like the friendships, they each felt lifesaving to me for a while, but they always failed. Like me, each individual did not have healthy boundaries and thus fed into my desperation. We activated each other’s unhealthy nervous systems.

I’m needy but I will not show it!

Usually with “attach/cry for help”, the person is overly needy in their behavior and friends or significant others complain about this. In my case, I have all this desperation within but severely hold back in displaying the behaviors for 2 reasons.

#1 I learned in childhood that my emotions could not be supported. Emotions and neediness were always met with rejection and distance. I am terrified of looking needy as it feels like a risk to losing someone I love.

#2 I was in a marriage filled with abuse. A cry for help was a dangerous tactic that would trigger an attack. I had a husband that did not allow me to have friendships or even private conversations with family members. He monitored my phone calls, my whereabouts. I quickly learned to keep any attempt for a friendship secret although my mind was consumed with the potential lifelines.

So although the desperation consumes me, and it takes so much energy to hold back – I make myself not call 10 times a day; not send double, triple the texts I want to send; not beg for more time together…always feeling it is never enough, I focus hard on not letting this be seen. At all costs, I cannot let others see my intense desperation.

searching to be rescued from a situation I am no longer in

When I felt I could trust a person I would confide just a little bit of my pain, give some clues to my abusive relationship. Years after getting out of the marriage, I was still repeating the same pattern…hoping for a rescue.

None were my lifeline because with the grace of God, and the loving support of those who care about me, I must become my lifeline.

a healthy friend

For the first time in my life, I have a friendship that does not feed my fight or flight activation – my cry for help. But that does not mean I do not experience all the same desperate cry for help feelings within the friendship. Although I began the friendship in the same pattern, in hopes of finding a lifeline, she did not feed into my desperation.

Like all the prior relationships, I never looked to her for soothing or direction. Rather, I searched for a deep connection and to know for certain that she will not abandon me as I somehow find release from the trauma my body holds.

Over time, and in a healthy way, I shared most of my pain with her. Almost always with a cup of coffee instead of drugs or alcohol! She gave me a sense of safety that allowed for honesty. With each story, each painful detail that I managed to get out, my hands and body would shake and this shaking would remain with me all day. But little by little the trauma that kept me captive was being shattered. After two years of this, I rarely ever shake.

One time, with a particularly shameful story, she saw my struggle and asked, “Is your inability to get the words out because of the pain or because you are scared of what I will think of you?”

That honest question threw me. I realized that I was scared to death of her becoming disappointed in me. If she sees how desperate I am, how ugly I am on the inside, she will be done with me. Yes! What she will think of me is such an enormous factor in what I do NOT share! It is very hard to move past that. But I am doing it….

a friend with boundaries gives what you need (not what you want)

But she did not. She did not meet my cry with endless time and attention. Her boundaries allowed me to have my needs met in a healthy way. Her boundaries allowed me to shift from a desperate need for a lifeline to the real need within – to process my trauma.

Like my loving husband, she did not rescue me from the intense feelings of unsafety that are always in my body but she showed up again and again, with warmth in her face, in her voice. She does not feed into my frantic desperation (which I did my best to keep hidden). I had this enormous gaping hole in me that could not be filled and I looked at everyone in the world with the angry conviction that nobody could fill it. It was overwhelming, this emptiness in me! But this friend – she simply shows up again and again, and slowly this hole began to fill in. It no longer feels impossible.

She showed up for me — but on her own time – in what works for her life. She is compassionate but does not smother me with soothing words that I don’t care about, thus this connection soothes me in my core. It tells me she is with me, she cares, and this gives me the safety to work through it. With the love of my friend, my husband, and 1 or 2 other strong healthy people in my life, I am working through all of it!

now that I am aware, how do I nurture myself?

So now I know all this about myself. How do I nurture myself to heal and grow? How do I just be? Awareness is always a positive thing. It does not always feel good – often it feels damn awful learning about myself! But with this awareness, I can recognize the desperation that rises within me and find self-compassion for my survival instincts.

Today I will spend time in deep prayer. I will tune in to the gratefulness in my heart for these special loving connections I finally have in my life. My cry for help feelings and behaviors need to be understood, not despised. The self-hatred must end. Somehow I have to comfort myself for the needs and behaviors and thoughts I have – to not see them as shameful and humiliating.

healing continues through healthy connections

People with PTSD live in trauma time, not present time. The needy desperate behaviors come from parts of us that have never caught up to present time. But in healthy relationships, we can develop safety. In this we may find self-compassion to start to soothe ourselves, to accept ourselves. In this, our bodies will begin to know they are no longer in danger.

---

REFERENCE

Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (2020). A mistake practitioners might make when their patient is stuck in the “attach/cry-for-help” response. https://www.nicabm.com/when-a-patient-is-stuck-in-attach-cry-for-help-response/