Rebuilding Trust and Commitment to Heal Complex Trauma
For those recovering from complex trauma, the path to healing can feel like navigating a landscape with a broken compass. The internal maps that should guide us toward connection, safety, and self-worth are often distorted by early experiences of neglect, inconsistency, and betrayal. The foundational stones of a healthy life—trust and commitment—are the very structures most damaged by complex trauma. Yet, they are also the very structures we must painstakingly rebuild, not just with others, but first and foremost, with ourselves.
This journey of complex trauma recovery begins with a sobering truth: if the essential tools for meeting your needs weren’t given to you as a child, you must now become the teacher. You must learn to regulate emotions you were left to drown in, practice self-care you were never modeled, and offer yourself the compassion and validation that was absent. This is the heart of re-parenting—changing the story of how you treat yourself.
But to write that new story, you need a solid foundation. That foundation is built on two inseparable pillars: trust, and the commitment that makes trust possible.
What Does Commitment Really Mean for Trauma Survivors?
Our understanding of commitment is often narrowly defined—and deeply scarred—by our past. In complex trauma, a child’s need for committed caregivers is frequently met with inconsistency, abandonment, or enmeshment. As a result, your internal blueprint for commitment might be limited to a single, survival-based idea:
If your physical needs were neglected, commitment might simply mean someone who meets my needs.
If you lived in fear, commitment equals someone who keeps me safe.
If promises were routinely broken, commitment is reduced to someone who keeps their word.
These are fragments of the whole picture, survival adaptations born from deprivation. True, healthy commitment is far richer and more active. It is the essential engine of every intimate, growing relationship. At its core, commitment is choosing to continue doing the right thing, following your core principles, and prioritizing the relationship—even on the days you don’t feel like it.
This is where complex trauma recovery requires a pivotal shift: from the limbic brain (the emotional, child-like brain that says “I’ll only do it if I feel like it”) to the cortex (the thoughtful adult brain that can make and keep promises despite fluctuating feelings).
The 26 Facets of a Healing Commitment
A full, healing commitment is multi-faceted. In the context of re-parenting yourself or building healthy relationships, it involves:
1. Exclusivity: Prioritizing the relationship, which means saying “no” to other things.
2. Mutuality: Understanding that your needs are as important as mine.
3. Anti-Abandonment: A vow to your wounded inner child: “I will not leave you again.”
4. Radical Honesty: Open communication with no secrets.
5. Acceptance & Attunement: Seeing, accepting, and striving to understand the whole person—their dreams, fears, and wounds.
6. Being “All In”: Jumping in with both feet, without one foot out the escape hatch—a common survival adaptation in complex trauma.
7. Daily Re-choosing: Choosing the person (including yourself) again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.
8. Problem-Solving with Ownership: Being willing to own your part, change, and work through issues.
9. Unwavering Respect: Especially during conflict.
10. Courageous Vulnerability: Sharing your authentic self, weaknesses and all.
11. Thinking for “We”: Making decisions that benefit the relationship, not just the self.
12. Showing Up: Being present and loving even when tired, hurt, or stressed.
This framework aligns with established models of attachment repair, which emphasize consistency, safety, and emotional responsiveness as key to healing developmental trauma. For a deeper dive into how complex trauma distorts your relational map, explore our detailed guide on how complex trauma distorts your map to connection.
Ultimately, commitment begins and is sustained by one core belief: “You have immense value to me.” For the survivor, the haunting daily question in relationships—and with themselves—is: “Do your words and actions still communicate that I have value?”
How is Trust Eroded in Complex Trauma?
Trust is the beautiful, fragile house built on the foundation of commitment. It takes time to build and can be shattered in an instant—or, more commonly for complex trauma survivors, slowly chipped away by a thousand small cuts.
These erosions of trust are often the unhealthy behaviors and complex trauma symptoms that become ingrained:
Chronic lateness or flakiness.
Making your partner (or yourself) a low priority.
Being contact-only when you want something.
Emotional unavailability during pain or sickness.
A “me” versus “we” approach to life.
Broken promises, white lies, or a refusal to apologize.
Disrespect, humiliation, or invalidation.
Emotional or physical unfaithfulness.
Unregulated emotions or addictive behaviors.
Inconsistency—saying one thing and doing another.
Every unhealthy pattern, every broken internal boundary, is a crack in the structure of trust. For the survivor learning to trust and commit again, this awareness is crucial: rebuilding requires vigilant, consistent health.
Rebuilding Trust with Your Wounded Self
So, how do you rebuild when the deepest breach of trust is the one you have with yourself? When you’ve internalized the abandonment and learned to neglect your own needs? This is the central work of re-parenting for complex trauma in adults.
1. Have The Conversation. Sit with your younger, wounded self. Let that part speak about the pain of being abandoned—first by caregivers, then by you. Listen without defence or shame. Validate the feelings. This act of listening is the first step in demonstrating a new, committed presence.
2. Make a Cortex-Based Commitment. From your thoughtful, adult mind, make a solemn vow to your inner child: “I am committed to meeting our needs. I will not abandon you again.” This isn’t a fleeting emotion; it’s a covenant.
3. Maintain Internal Boundaries. Commitment lives and dies in the daily routine. This means translating your vow into actionable internal boundaries:
“I commit to 8 hours of sleep to care for our nervous system.”
“I commit to regular meals to nourish our body.”
“I commit to a daily check-in to honour our emotions.”
“I commit to saying ‘no’ to others to protect our time and energy.”
Your inner child is watching these actions, not just listening to words. This is how trust is slowly, painstakingly earned back.
4. Learn to Cherish the Unloved Parts. That wounded inner child often holds the traits you were taught to hate: your sensitivity, your big emotions, your needs. Commitment now means learning to cherish those very parts. It means ending the internal war and offering sanctuary to your whole self.
Practical Ways to Nurture Commitment and Cherish Value
Whether you are nurturing a relationship, a child, or yourself, commitment is strengthened by active cherishing. Here are ways to put “you have value” into action:
Create Ritual Time: A date with yourself, your partner, or your child. Undivided attention is a profound validator.
Speak Specific Praise: Name positive qualities. “I really value your perseverance” is more powerful than “You’re great.”
Comfort the Hurt: A simple, “That sounds really hard. I’m here with you,” rebuilds trust in moments of pain.
Leave Notes: Physical tokens of appreciation anchor the feeling of being valued.
Have Their Back: Stand up for them. Be their safe haven in a storm.
Do Their “Boring” Thing: Engage in their interest purely because it brings them joy. It telegraphs, “You matter to me.”
The dynamics of self-abandonment and the critical need for self-commitment are deeply intertwined with codependency, another common adaptation to complex trauma. You can learn more about this cycle in our article, "if you leave me can i come too codependency and complex trauma explained".
The Path Forward: Your Commitment is the First Step
Healing from complex trauma is, at its heart, a story of rebuilding. It begins with the courageous decision to become a person of commitment—first to yourself. When you make a commitment, you build hope. When you keep that commitment, day after day, in the small, unglamorous choices of self-care and boundary-keeping, you build trust.
That trust becomes the new foundation. From it, you can build healthier relationships with others, not from a place of desperate need, but from a place of wholeness and chosen connection. The journey from survival to thriving starts with a single, repeated promise: “I am here for you. I value you. I will not leave.” Say it to yourself until your deepest parts finally believe it.
Where to Begin Your Healing Journey
The Tim Fletcher Co. methodology is built on a progressive 4 Tier path to healing, recognizing that recovery is a journey that deepens over time.
Tier 1: Introductory Education. Focus: Build awareness and foundational language. Goal: Understand C PTSD basics. Recommended Starting Point: Evergreen Library for micro learning.
Tier 2: Enhanced Learning Tools. Focus: Develop agency and a deeper personal understanding. Goal: Gain practical tools with community support. Recommended Starting Point: ALIGN Courses for self guided learning.
Tier 3: Immersive Recovery. Focus: Practice tools for transformation in a supported space. Goal: Experience real, lasting change. Recommended Starting Point: LIFT Online Learning, the core immersive program.
Tier 4: Supporting Others. Focus: Extend healing by equipping yourself to help others. Goal: Learn to support, serve, and lead in recovery. Recommended Starting Point: COMPASS Internship for those called to lead and serve.
If you see your story in these words, know that you are not alone, and what was shaped by relationship can be healed in relationship, starting with the compassionate relationship you build with yourself. Your healing is possible.