Your Past is Present in Your Relationships: Trauma, Attachment & Healing
On the latest episode of my podcast Feel and Find Out, I sat down with Phoenix-based therapist Elaine Evans, LPC to explore how the emotional echoes of our past shape the way we connect, love, and relate in the present. Elaine, the founder of Third Place Therapy and a trauma-informed, EMDR Certified and Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, offered compassionate, grounded insight into the often unseen forces that shape our relationships.
From the start, Elaine emphasizes that the work she does isn’t about slapping on quick fixes—it’s about digging into the deeper layers of our experiences. Using EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to process painful memories and IFS to understand the different "parts" of ourselves, she helps clients untangle old wounds with curiosity instead of shame.
Redefining Trauma: It’s Not Just What Happened—It’s What Lingers
One of the most powerful takeaways from our conversation was Elaine’s redefinition of trauma. Rather than limiting it to catastrophic events, she describes trauma as anything that was “too much too soon, too much for too long, or too little for too long.” This framing opens the door for people who’ve silently wondered whether their experiences “count” as trauma—spoiler alert: if your nervous system is still carrying it, they do.
Elaine reminds us that trauma is deeply subjective. It's not about what others think should or shouldn't have hurt—it’s about how your body and brain experienced it, and how it's showing up now.
How Childhood Wounds Sneak into Adult Relationships
We also explored how unhealed trauma—especially from childhood—can distort our perception of present-day relationships. For instance, when a partner forgets a date night, it might trigger a disproportionate emotional response. Not because of the oversight itself, but because it activates old wounds of feeling forgotten or unloved.
In this way, many of us unknowingly react not just to our partners, but to the ghosts of past relationships. And without realizing it, we often choose romantic dynamics that mirror our earliest attachment patterns. Elaine explains how anxious and avoidant attachment styles tend to attract one another—a magnetic but often tumultuous pairing that can feel both intoxicating and impossible.
Healing Happens in Relationship, Too
What’s especially affirming about Elaine’s approach is the reminder that none of this means we’re broken. As she puts it, “I think our biggest wounds happen in relationship—but also, our biggest healing happens in relationship.” The goal isn’t to erase the past, but to understand it, tend to it, and reclaim the parts of ourselves that learned to survive in less-than-nurturing conditions.
She also challenges the cultural fixation on "fixing" trauma. So many of us approach healing from a place of shame or self-repair. But, as Elaine shares, “My situation was broken. My situation needed to be fixed. But at my core, I’m whole. I’m enough. I’m deserving of love.”
From Repetition to Repair
Ultimately, this conversation is an invitation to pause and ask: Am I reacting from the present, or from the past? Am I trying to reenact something old, or am I ready to do something different?
When we understand how trauma shapes our inner world, we can begin to shift how we show up in our relationships—with more compassion, intention, and emotional freedom. And as Elaine’s work so beautifully reminds us, healing doesn’t mean becoming someone new. It means coming home to who we’ve always been.
Connect with Elaine on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thirdplacetherapy/