When Love Meets Wounding: The Trauma and Energy Dynamics of Challenging Relationships
Hello, darling,
You are here because you are looking for answers, right? Either it is for yourself or your loved one, the first steps to uncovering the challenges in the relationship are awareness followed by understanding of the energy dynamics. This blog post is a helpful tool for you to receive some answers. Feel free to comment below should you have any questions after reading.
Some of the most intense and transformative relationships we experience are also the most painful. These are the relationships that pull us into deep emotional waters — where love is present, but safety is not.
Many women who come to Rose Priestess Reiki™ describe relationships that feel magnetic yet destabilizing. They love deeply, they sense the soul connection, and yet they constantly feel unseen, dismissed, or abandoned. I am one of these women, for a decade I was in this type of relationship dynamic.
This paradox — love intertwined with fear — is at the heart of trauma-bonded and avoidant relationships. Understanding the emotional and energetic mechanics behind this dynamic is key to breaking free and healing.
The Paradox of Love and Fear
“The greatest paradox of love is that we long for closeness, yet fear the vulnerability it requires.”
— John Bowlby, founder of Attachment Theory
From a psychological perspective, avoidant attachment often develops in early childhood when love and connection were inconsistent or conditional. A child who learns that emotional closeness leads to rejection, control, or humiliation internalises a simple truth: intimacy is not safe.
As adults, these individuals may consciously crave love, but unconsciously avoid it. Their nervous system is wired to interpret intimacy as a threat. When a partner moves closer emotionally, their body floods with anxiety or shutdown signals:
Heart racing or tightness in the chest
Urge to withdraw or go numb
Irritability or feeling trapped by emotional needs
Urges to be angry and raise their voice
This is not a lack of care. It’s a protective response — a nervous system trying to maintain control in the face of vulnerability.
Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, writes: “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”
The avoidant person often carries deep unmet grief — the pain of never having been truly held. When love appears, it awakens both longing and terror. Their defence is distance.
The Empath’s Role: When Compassion Becomes Overextension
Empaths and highly sensitive individuals frequently attract avoidant or narcissistic partners because their energy feels safe and nurturing. Their openness creates a temporary sense of relief in the avoidant’s nervous system.
But over time, the energetic balance tips. The empath begins to reach, to give, to soothe, believing love can heal the other’s pain. Meanwhile, the avoidant retreats further into self-protection.
This creates a cycle of pursuit and withdrawal, driven by the nervous system, not logic:
The empath’s fear is abandonment.
The avoidant’s fear is engulfment.
Both are protecting their hearts — one through closeness, the other through distance. As Stan Tatkin, author of Wired for Love, explains: “When the nervous system of one partner becomes overwhelmed, it no longer seeks connection — it seeks survival.”
In energy terms, this manifests as cord entanglement: the empath’s field extends to stabilize the other, slowly draining vitality. You might feel confused, tired, or even physically unwell after interactions. The energetic flow becomes one-sided.
The Trauma of Feeling Unloved
It’s important to acknowledge that the avoidant or narcissistic-leaning partner often carries their own deep trauma — the trauma of being unloved. This isn’t the same as being unloved in truth, but feeling unloved because their early caregivers could not meet them emotionally.
When someone learns that love equals control, rejection, or pain, they internalise shame: I am unworthy of love. So they build walls to protect themselves from ever feeling that pain again. This is why an avoidant may say they want closeness, then sabotage it. Their inner child equates love with danger. Their adult self desires intimacy, but their body reacts with fear.
In these cases, emotional unavailability is not malice — it’s a trauma defence. As trauma therapist Diane Poole Heller notes: “Attachment ruptures are not about a lack of love, but a lack of safety.”
Understanding this doesn’t mean excusing hurtful behaviour, but it does bring compassion — both for yourself and for the wounded dynamics that play out beneath the surface.
Healing the Energetic and Emotional Patterns
Healing begins with awareness. When you understand the emotional and energetic language of your relationship, you stop personalizing the other’s reactions and start reclaiming your own power.
Here are some foundational steps I guide clients through in Rose Priestess Reiki sessions:
Reclaim your energetic boundaries.
Through heart-based energy practices, we gently call back your energy from where it has overextended. You learn to stay connected without merging or rescuing. Breaking the pattern of the wounded triangle dynamics: victim, persecutor, rescuer.Regulate your nervous system.
Grounding, breathwork, movement, and somatic awareness help calm the body’s hypervigilance so love no longer feels like survival.Grieve the fantasy.
Healing requires mourning the version of love you hoped would heal the other person. Grief clears the illusion, making space for authentic love to emerge.Repattern your attachment to self.
You become the safe base your heart has always needed. Through compassion, forgiveness, and energy alignment, you embody self-trust and emotional sovereignty.Reopen the heart field.
The Magdalene frequency helps transmute pain into wisdom. It reawakens the sacred balance of love and discernment, so the heart can stay open without losing itself.Work on thought patterning and staying present.
Cultivating mindfulness helps you observe recurring thought loops without being swept away by them. By staying present, you can notice triggers, release old narratives about love and worthiness, and respond from clarity rather than fear.
From Pain to Power
Once your system learns that safety and love can coexist, everything changes. You stop attracting relationships that mirror your unhealed pain, and instead magnetize those who meet you in wholeness.
Love ceases to be a battlefield, instead creates a sanctuary, your personal sacred space of creation. As your energy recalibrates, you no longer need to chase or prove love. You become love — radiant, rooted, sovereign, and free.
Reflections
Every soul will encounter relationships that awaken both love and pain. These are not mistakes; they are initiations into deeper consciousness. If you are navigating a relationship that feels like both home and heartbreak, remember: you are not broken or unworthy.
You are remembering your worth, your boundaries, and your divine capacity to love without losing yourself. You are going through the moment of deep transformation and evolution.
True healing is not about fixing another — it’s about reclaiming the energy you’ve poured into what could not hold it, and returning it to the sacred temple of your own heart.
“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” — Brené Brown
Work With Me
If this reflection resonates with your own story, I invite you to explore 7 Spirals of Self-Discovery as a pathway to healing the energetic and emotional wounds of love.
In a 1:1 RPR Session, we’ll work gently through the layers of the heart field, release energetic cords of overgiving, and restore your connection to self-worth and wholeness.
For those who feel called to go deeper, you can also receive the Magdalene Rose Reiki™ Attunement — a sacred initiation that awakens your own capacity to channel this frequency of heart-based healing.
✨ Book a 1:1 Session
✨ Receive the Attunement
Your heart was never meant to harden — only to remember its infinite strength ❤️⚜️🌹