Amy L. Fiedler

Clients often ask me: “Why do I still get triggered… even though I know I’m finally in a safe relationship?”

It’s a powerful question and one that comes up all the time in post-traumatic growth work.

Because when your nervous system has spent years bracing for harm, safe won’t immediately feel… safe.
It’ll feel unfamiliar. It feels suspicious. Unsettling. And that sends threat signals to your nervous system.

🧠 That’s your system’s memory because the body is responding to what it had to survive repeatedly. It’s trying to protect you, that’s all.

Even a gentle tone can feel dangerous when it once came before emotional or physical withdrawal.

For me - kindness felt suspicious. I always thought “what’s the catch?”

A compliment felt manipulative.
Unconditional love felt like when’s the other shoe gonna drop.

And mind you - sometimes it takes months or years into a safe relationship for some of these layers to emerge. I felt fine until about a year into my relationship where the commitment level was different and so was the level of vulnerability and intimacy.

This is why telling anyone who’s experienced relational trauma to just trust someone or trust the process isn’t going to work. Trusting starts with learning true discernment - how to tell the difference between past danger and present day safety in your body and in your interactions with others.

And discernment comes from foundations - the very things I teach: knowing your values, your boundaries, and your unique triggers. That’s what allows you to hold onto yourself and stay connected, even when your body wants to run or shutdown.

That’s the real work we do when learning how to integrate all your awareness and apply it into your real relationships.

✨ So, if this resonates, this is exactly what I walk you through inside Boundary Setting for Trauma Survivors and Rebuilding Self-Trust - the foundational skills that help you build safety and discernment step by step. Both are available separately and in a bundle. Access them at the link in bio.

It’s easy to blame others for YOU feeling drained but this one is on you. If you’re ‘drained’ then use that as information you have exceeded your threshold.

It’s information!

A lot of my work focuses on agency & accountability because that’s how you reclaim internal authority.

That’s how you navigate life’s stressors without feeling like a victim or at the mercy of everyone around you. That’s how you stop stewing & saying ‘this isn’t fair to me’.

Listen I’ve done all those things too and yes while there are a lot of varying reasons we don’t speak up - if you’re here following my work then you usually know what they are for you.

So it’s not an awareness issue. You can name your fear of abandonment, backlash, punishment. You are usually wondering what do I do with that information now that I’m aware of it…

👉The answer is we build skills to be able to take some actionable steps to reclaim our voice, feel safe, secure and anchored in what we need and want.🤝

Feeling drained is NOT an indication that the other person is ‘toxic’ despite what you may see on internet memes. Feeling drained is merely an indication of allowing too much and never following through on a clear on your end.

Feeling drained means you’ve allowed too much and now must speak up for yourself and what you need/want.

Where your skill building starts depends on where you get stuck:

Self-attunement: Are you tuned into the cues (physical or emotional sensations) that indicate you’re starting to surpass your limit? Sometimes that’s simply feeling annoyed and other times it’s rage pumping through your veins.

Communication: Do you struggle with what to say? How to not sound ‘rude’ or ‘mean’ or ‘uncaring’?

Follow-through: A lot of people do not recognize a boundary is not a boundary unless you’ve actually followed through on it. I always have said that means matching your actions to your words. If I say I can’t accept calls during my work day then it’s my responsibility to not answer even if they pop up. Most people get annoyed others keep calling - truth is your boundary was never supposed to control them. It was to clarify what you will do.

Tell me, where do you find you struggle most ✨

One of the hardest habits to unlearn after relational trauma is taking responsibility for someone else’s emotions.

A lot of individuals I work with struggle with internal boundaries and emotional responsibility. They’ve long been in environments and relationships around those who don’t manage their own emotions or have deflected, projected or displaced blame onto them.

So now they naturally make it their responsibility even when they’re no longer in those environments.

Not because they’re wanting to control them but because their nervous system feels safer when they can predict what’s coming.

So, when someone goes quiet, pulls away, or seems slightly “off” - your body jumps in to protect. To others it may be judged as overreacting. It’s not!

This is what happens when emotional tracking becomes your survival strategy and when your body feels more responsible for someone else’s feelings than your own.

The good news is it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can change this reflex…
With the right tools, you can learn to pause that automatic spiral and re-anchor in your own internal cues.

This post walks you through how that shift begins🤍

When you once survived by managing the emotions of others - especially your caregivers - it creates a distorted sense of responsibility.

‘If I’m sad, they yell so I’ll stuff my feelings down so they stay calm.’

‘If I’m anxious or hurt and they panic too, I learn it’s not safe to be vulnerable with them. They can’t support me so I hide my pain and look for other ways to cope.’

This was the hidden reality for many people who grew up in emotionally immature, or chaotic environments. We believed it was our job to regulate and take on everyone else’s feelings to keep the peace.

To avoid backlash.
To preserve sanity, freedom, attention, affection.
To protect from punishment.

So when it’s time to focus on your own emotions and needs, it can feel jarring, like you’re waking up to a version of yourself you were too busy protecting others to even notice.

That role reversal can now make it hard to trust others to manage their own feelings.

This fear runs deep and is very real. As if you stop managing their emotions, they might mismanage them and take it out on you, just like you learned to fear as a child.

Sometimes that looks like staying silent or staying guarded. Sometimes that looks like self-neglect or even controlling tendencies within your relationships.

This distrust doesn’t change overnight! It calls for improved internal boundaries around your emotional responsibility.

Healing means unlearning that old pattern and giving yourself permission to feel what’s yours without the weight of others emotions on your shoulders.🤍

Safe, healthy relationships don’t require giving more of yourself - healing your old abandonment wounds means learning how to protect your energy without sacrificing your empathy.

When you set boundaries, you’re not just protecting yourself from over-giving; you’re also creating space for deeper, more meaningful connections.

It’s time to stop choosing OTHERS over yourself and start choosing BOTH!

If you’re ready to start building more balanced connections while reclaiming your energy in healthy ways, check out my Boundary Setting for Trauma Survivors course at the link in the comments below