Definition: Relational Trauma
Relational trauma refers to the emotional and psychological wounds that arise from early experiences of inconsistent, neglectful, or harmful relationships—usually with caregivers or significant others—during critical periods of development. It is not simply about a single traumatic event or obvious abuse, but often about subtle patterns of emotional unavailability, unpredictability, or rejection that quietly shape how you relate to yourself and others. For high-achieving women, relational trauma can show up as a persistent inner doubt or a silent self-criticism that contradicts outward success, making it feel like no achievement is ever quite enough. Understanding relational trauma matters because it invites curiosity about these hidden wounds rather than self-blame or the pressure to “fix” yourself on your own.
Definition: Attachment Wounds
Attachment wounds are the emotional injuries that happen when your early needs for safety, connection, and attuned care weren’t reliably met by the people you depended on most. They are not about being spoiled, weak, or overly dependent; instead, they are about the very real impact of feeling unseen, unheard, or unprotected in the relationships that first teach you what love and safety feel like. For driven women, these wounds can create a confusing split between the confident, accomplished exterior and an internal experience of loneliness, fear, or mistrust. Naming attachment wounds helps you recognize that your struggles aren’t personal failings but echoes of early relational patterns, opening the door to healing with both compassion and clarity.
For people with relational trauma backgrounds, choosing goals often requires a prior step: discerning which goals actually belong to you, and which are organized around earning approval, proving worth, or managing anxiety.
Quick Summary
- You may be carrying the weight of relational trauma that makes New Year’s calls to reinvent yourself feel like a reminder that you’re broken and need fixing.
- This post invites you to shift from asking ‘what do I need to change?’ to ‘what do I need to understand?’ — approaching the new year with curiosity instead of self-criticism.
- Healing begins when you intentionally set goals that belong to you, grounded in self-awareness rather than approval-seeking, and lean into the profound question Mary Oliver asks: what will you do with your one wild and precious life?
Good morning,
Summary
New Year invitations to reinvent yourself are everywhere — and for driven women carrying relational trauma or attachment wounds, they can inadvertently reinforce the lie that you’re fundamentally broken and need fixing. This post proposes a different kind of question: not ‘what do I need to change?’ but ‘what do I need to understand?’ — and makes the case for approaching a new year from curiosity rather than self-criticism.
Happy New Year to you!
I hope that this first week of your year has been good, easeful and reflective of all that may come your way in 2018.
I’m back from my holiday travels, feeling nourished and inspired about this coming year and all the potential it holds. Inspired and also in awe of all that can happen for each of us in 365 days.
Truly, the new year always feels like a bit of a gift to me.
Intentional Goal Setting
Intentional goal setting is the practice of choosing goals that are genuinely aligned with your own values, desires, and vision — not those inherited from family systems, cultural conditioning, or the pressure to perform. For people with relational trauma backgrounds, this often requires a prior step: discerning which of your goals actually belong to you, and which are organized around earning approval, proving worth, or managing anxiety.
A blank slate. A chance to craft and script more of the life I’d like to consciously live and a chance to move away from that which no longer serves me.
It’s a time of year when I ask myself a question taken from the poem, The Summer Day, by Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver.
The Summer Day
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
– Mary Oliver
These two lines, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” contain the question I feel compelled to ask myself each year.
And indeed, I think this is the question (or one of the questions) we are all called to answer this new year if we want to more fully show up for our lives.
In 2017, life, for many of us, may have felt more turbulent, more fleeting, more challenging than any other in recent memory.
The fragility and preciousness of life can often feel more marked in such contrast. It did for me at least.
And such fragility reminds me to ask this question of myself and to all who come through my doors for counseling and for help, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
In asking this question, we can acknowledge that life is fleeting and that we will die. And that, while death is unavoidable, it can be a source of great inspiration and motivation to help us more clearly see how it is we want to live while we do.
This question prompts us to audit our lives, to examine what’s working and what’s no longer serving us, which courses we may need to re-plot, and which paths still feel like our own personal true north.
I want to gently invite you to ask yourself this question this year. And I also want to provide you with some additional prompts and tips to help you better reflect on what, indeed, you do want to do with your one wild and precious life this year.
Clarifying what you need and want from your one wild and precious life.
Sometimes, simply in asking this question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, we will know our answers. We’ll hear our soul. We will feel clear.
But, for many of us, this will not be the case.
The answer to this question may feel murky and may feel hard to distinguish from “shoulds” (which, of course, are not true soul longings but rather what we imagine is expected of us from external sources). We may feel so disconnected from our truth that this question makes us anxious or sad that we can’t answer it.
And that’s okay! I think that’s a really common response. It’s not as if society by in large encourages us to pay attention to the whispers of our soul on a daily basis, does it?
So I want to share five tips and tricks I have for clarifying your answers to this question if it feels murky for you:
- Pay attention to your body. Yes, your body. Close your eyes, deepen your breath, relax into your body and notice any sensations in your body. Tightness, warmth, tingles, tension. Notice it all and be curious what those somatic (body-based) signals are saying. What clues does your body have for you about what you want?
- Pay attention to where your mind goes when it wanders. Reflect on what you daydream about, what your waking reveries contain. Do you dream of travel, of more time outside, of a deeply creative work life? The content that your wandering mind is drawn to again and again may signal a longing of your soul.
- Ask yourself, what do you want so badly but are afraid to even admit it to yourself? Is there something you feel embarrassed or even a little ashamed to want or long for? Good! This may be information about what you truly want. Seriously.
- Look back at your prior journals and diaries. What did you write about and hunger for when you were younger? A certain career path or lifestyle choice? A way of living in the world that you feel far away from at present? Your old self’s reflections may still resonate with you today, so pay attention to what you wrote about.
- Get still. Whether this is in nature, at home on your couch, even on the subway commuting into work, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, try to clear your mind and be still. And then pay attention to what surfaces.
Wrapping up.
And please remember, this is not about goal formulation, per say. When Mary Oliver asks us that question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, in my opinion, she’s asking us to listen to our soul for the deepest kind of life longings we have, soul hungers, true desires and dreams.
I invite you to make 2018 the year you feed your soul more.
When we nourish our souls by consciously choosing more and more of the life we dream of for ourselves, we can, in my opinion, show up in the world more nourished, equipped, and sustained to face the external realities of life and to support others along our path.
I’ll be asking myself this question over and over again this year and invite you to do the same.
Now I would love to hear from you:
When you ask yourself this question, what comes up for you?
If you’re open to it, please leave a message in the comments on the blog so our community of readers and learners can benefit from your insight and wisdom.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why do New Year resolutions so often fail?
Primarily because they’re built on willpower and self-criticism rather than genuine understanding. Most resolutions treat the behavior as the problem without looking at what the behavior is serving. For women with relational trauma or nervous system dysregulation, behaviors that look like ‘bad habits’ are often coping strategies — and targeting them without addressing the underlying need tends to produce short-term change followed by rebound.
What’s a healthier way to approach self-improvement goals?
Start with curiosity rather than judgment. Ask what a pattern is protecting you from before trying to eliminate it. Set intentions that feel genuinely inviting rather than punishing. And choose changes that are sustainable over time rather than dramatic overhauls that require willpower the nervous system will eventually exhaust. Slow and consistent tends to outlast fast and drastic.
How does childhood relational trauma affect goal-setting in adulthood?
Significantly. Women with childhood relational trauma often have a complicated relationship with achievement — striving is deeply familiar, but the gap between ‘who I am’ and ‘who I’m supposed to be’ can feel enormous. New Year can intensify that gap. The inner critic that was shaped by early relational messages tends to get louder in moments of cultural pressure to be better.
What question is actually worth asking at the start of a new year?
Try: What did I learn about myself this past year? What did I need that I didn’t give myself? What relational experiences nourished me and which depleted me? What do I want more of — not as an achievement, but as a lived experience? These questions tend to generate more useful and sustainable self-knowledge than productivity-focused resolutions.
Is it possible to approach personal growth without self-judgment?
Yes — and it’s also more effective. Self-compassion research consistently shows that people who approach their shortcomings with kindness and curiosity rather than harsh self-judgment are more likely to make lasting change, not less. The inner critic that feels like motivation is often the thing slowing you down. Treating yourself with the warmth you’d offer a close friend is a starting point, not a finishing one.
This is part of our comprehensive guide on this topic. For the full picture, read: Outgrowing Your Origins: A Complete Guide.
DISCLAIMER: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.
References
- Schore, A. N. (2003). Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry.
- Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself. Self and Identity.
- Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.
- Gilbert, P. (2009). The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life’s Challenges. New Harbinger Publications.
- Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves. American Psychologist.
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About the Author
Annie Wright, LMFT
Annie Wright, LMFT helps ambitious women finally feel as good as their resume looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
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