When Fear Comes Back: Trauma Tiggers during a Medical Crisis

Have you ever had something so terrifying happen that your brain forgets the present moment and throws you straight into panic?

That’s what happened when I learnt my partner needed surgery.

One minute, we were six weeks out from moving to Bali and living our dream. Next, I’m suddenly sitting on the floor in my office after learning that JB needed open heart surgery.

What we thought was a chest infection was genetic heart failure. A repeat operation of one 15 years prior and a world of complications.

As a calm and fuss-free man, JB had intentionally created his normal world to be drama-free; however, he was a walking juxtaposition. There was no simple fix. This wouldn’t be routine. The word “tricky” kept getting used.

JB was diligent in monitoring his condition. Three months before, he’d been signed off by the cardiologist that everything was “great!” The current deterioration signified how quickly things could change in such a short period of time.

Suddenly, I was no longer the grounded, healing version of myself. I was her again. The woman who had to survive, who never felt safe, who braced for everything to fall apart. I thought she’d gone.

It was love that pulled this version of me back. Not abuse.

This post is about what it’s like to experience trauma triggers that you’d normally associate with your past. This how loving someone deeply after abuse can bring both intense fear and healing.

By the end of this post, you’ll understand:

Why fear for your person can activate past trauma, regardless of how you experienced it.
How loving safely doesn’t erase fear, it transforms how we manage it.
What to do when your nervous system goes into overdrive during someone else’s crisis.

A Safe Love, Suddenly Under Threat

When my partner told me about the surgery, I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to be calm and strong for him… but my brain didn’t care about logic.

It was a call at work after a routine MRI. Before I knew it, my legs had gently crumbled, and I was numbly sitting on the floor as the walls spun and JB sounded very far away. The only words I remember him saying during the call were “it isn’t good”. I remember saying something like “I’m coming home, I’m leaving now,” but the rest is just a fogged memory of confusion. I packed my work bag, put on my “out of office” and walked out to be with him.

When someone you love faces a medical crisis, or any crisis, it’s not just fear that rises. It’s memory.
Not always conscious memory, either.
But the kind that’s stored in your nervous system. The kind your body never forgot. The kind associated with the feelings that are now rushing through your body.

For survivors of abusive relationships, especially those with histories of emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, or chaotic environments, medical emergencies tap into a very old, very raw part of the brain. It’s the part that learned that safety could disappear in a moment, and that love doesn’t always come with protection.

Hypervigilance: The Return of Old Survival Patterns

My brain started scanning for everything that could go wrong. My anxiety piped up and told me every lie it could about what would happen. My body started grieving for something that hadn’t happened in some twisted pre-prepared manner, like that would assist me if the worst occurred (and it wouldn’t have softened the blow, so it’s cruel our brains do this).

The specialists said this was “urgent”, and yet weeks ticked by without a surgery date… What does urgent look like? Where is the line in the sand where I rush him to Emergency? What’s the timeline for urgent!? Hours, days, weeks, months?

How do I monitor him without fussing? Why aren’t they moving faster? What do you mean the surgeon is going on holiday next week?

I obsessively checked updates, appointments, and stats. I was all over ChatGPT. We became research pals as I tried to find whatever information I could to understand the situation. I treated it like trauma healing; the more knowledge I had about the situation and what was happening in his body, the better I would be. Right?

Wrong. This wasn’t researching hormone levels due to trauma and brain responses. This was entirely different, and the information overload was not helping.

I stopped sleeping, eating, and resting. JB couldn’t sleep lying down for long and moved to a recliner in the lounge in the early hours. I couldn’t sleep without hearing his breath next to me, so I would relocate to the recliner next to him.

It was the kind of vigilance I remembered from years ago, when I was walking on eggshells, constantly watching for signs of danger. But this time, there was no abuser. Just the fear of losing the most important person in my world.

Medical Crisis = Sudden Powerlessness

Even if though I wasn’t the one in the “hospital bed”, my trauma brain couldn’t tell the difference between:

“This feels unsafe.”
and “I am unsafe.”

This happens because survivors have often experienced moments where:

No one came to help
Your pain was minimised or ignored
You were forced to endure scary things alone
Or someone you loved wasn’t safe, and you had no control

A medical emergency, with its urgency, its helplessness, echoes that powerlessness. So, your brain will respond as if the danger is happening to you all over again.

“I was horrified I was making this about me… but trauma doesn’t ask permission before it shows up.”

The Trauma Brain Reacts to Patterns, Not Logic

Here’s what’s happening behind in scenes in a Trauma Brain:

The amygdala senses the crisis and sends out an alert.
The nervous system (already wired for hypervigilance) jumps into survival mode (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn).
Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, your rational brain, starts to go offline. Which means…
You can’t think your way out of fear. You can’t “calm down.” Because your system believes this moment is a threat.

While I was thinking, “He’s been through this before, he’s in good hands; there’s a great surgeon. I’m not even the one getting surgery.”

My body isn’t responding to this moment alone. It’s responding to every moment in my past where something went wrong, and no one made it right.

How My Trauma Evolved

When someone you love is in danger, in pain, or going through a crisis, whether it’s a surgery, an accident, or even just a scary diagnosis, your body can flip into emergency mode as if it’s happening to you.

If you are healing from an abusive relationship, this response can be extremely intense and hard to calm down.

Your heart races.
Your stomach knots.
You feel frozen or frantic.
You can’t sleep. You can’t eat.
You might even feel irrational guilt, like you should be doing more or fixing it.

This is your nervous system going into survival mode. And while it’s totally understandable, there are ways to support yourself through it.

I had never considered that something like this could trigger me. But I’ve learnt that trauma isn’t about what is happening now, it’s about what your body remembers from before.

A sudden loss of control? Trigger.
Powerlessness? Trigger.
Fear of abandonment? Trigger.

My partner wasn’t leaving me. But my body felt fear as if he already had. It was in the throes of experiencing full grief in preparation.

I was horrified I was making this about me. I was trying to hide the fear I felt, but I couldn’t.

He would question me about how I was feeling, and my thoughts and emotions would tumble out, and then I felt guilty to add that burden to him. This wasn’t about me! How dare I make this about me! *Cue negative self-talk*

He had been my rock and created a safe space for me to heal. The very least I could do right now is be there 100% for him without making it about me and my trauma.

It might not be logical.
It might not make sense to people who haven’t lived through what I had.
But my reaction was valid.

I wasn’t being dramatic.
I wasn’t making it about me.
I was simply having a trauma response because my body remembers what it’s like to be in danger, to be alone, or to lose without warning.

But the truth was;
I was not back there.
This moment was new.
I was not alone.
And this time, I had tools, self-awareness, and people who could help me stay steady.

You Are Not Overreacting. You Are Remembering.

Loving After Trauma

Loving someone after abuse is already vulnerable.

But loving someone who might die? That was an entirely different level of terror.

I felt like I hadn’t been grateful enough
I felt guilty for letting my guard down
I felt like my life had been “too good”, and that’s why this was now happening
I felt like he was being punished for being with me.
I feared the love we had was too good to last
I felt like we had just begun, and it was cruelly being taken away.

And I knew all the above were lies. This was my fear, my anxiety and my trauma.

Because trauma teaches us that love isn’t safe, and safety doesn’t last. But with awareness and support, that story in our heads can be rewritten.

Safe Love Doesn’t Delete the Past, but it Can Rewrite it

Now you have someone who holds your hand when the fear shows up, instead of being the reason for it.

Safe Love Helps You Respond Differently.

In unsafe love, fear had nowhere to go. You had to bottle it up, or shut down, or perform perfection just to survive.

But in safe love?
You can say:

“I’m scared right now.”
“This is hard.”
“I need reassurance.”

And if it’s truly safe love, you’re met there, not punished for being vulnerable or “needy”.

This is what transformation looks like:

Not the absence of fear, but the ability to feel it without spiralling
To share it without being ashamed.
To sit with it without becoming it.

So what did I do?

After my initial emotional reaction to the situation that occurred in front of and with JB, I decided that it was my job to look after myself so I could be there for JB and minimise any aftermath of the situation and trauma it triggered in me.

I learnt a long time ago that anxiety means a need for control. Letting go of anxiety is acknowledging that you cannot control an outcome. It’s learning to trust that everything will just be and will work out as it needs. Given the situation, that was almost impossible to find trust and faith in “what will be”.

But, I did have a choice about some things that remained in my control, and that was how I would cope and self-care.

I took myself off to a psychologist. After explaining the situation, I told her what I needed from her. She was to be my “emotional scratching post” where I would be unloading all the dark and horror that was running through my head, so I could be there for JB as best I could.

The next visit was to the doctors. What could I do to help JB? Where was “the line in the sand” where I had to call an ambulance? What did I need to know?

Work. That ended. I was already due to leave, so I booked off my extensive sick leave until my end date. There was no way I was going to put JB at more risk by going anywhere near the “petri dish” office. Given the situation, the idea of him being alone just made me feel ill.

Next, the removal of all things that did not truly matter. We could not control what was happening, so we had the choice to choose what we wanted to do versus what we thought we “should” do, and that’s what we did.

We went for walks on the beach. We watched Rugby all day. Watched movies. Read books. I drew and wrote when I wanted. We made beautiful meals together. We lived as best we could in a waiting game of the unknown. We tentatively spoke about the “other side” while not wanting to make any solid plans or discuss the outcome. We lived as we wanted in as much pleasure as possible while remaining in a stagnant position, while we waited for the surgery date.

While it may look like the pursuit of pure pleasure, it was self-care. Exercise, journaling, mindfulness and emotional expression. I leaned into everything I had learnt through trauma healing.

“I wasn’t reacting to this moment. I was reacting to every moment when something went wrong and no one made it right.”

Healing Isn’t About Becoming Fearless

Your nervous system doesn’t always need to regulate alone. Text a friend. Ask someone to sit with you. Tell your partner (if possible), “I’m feeling overwhelmed and just need you to hold my hand.”

Co-regulation is not a weakness; it’s biology. We calm down faster when we feel safe with someone else.

Healing Isn’t About Becoming Fearless. Fear still shows up in a crisis, especially how I’ve recently experienced it.

But while I had many moments of emotional reactions and mini spirals overall:

I let go of any shame I had for feeling it.
I let go of self-blame or collapse.
I could speak it out loud, ask for support.

Safe love doesn’t take away the storms, but it does offer some shelter.
It teaches your nervous system, over time, that fear can come… and go… without destroying everything.

You’re not failing at healing because you still feel afraid.
Fear doesn’t mean you haven’t “done the work.”
It just means you’re human, and your body still remembers.

The difference now? You know how to listen to fear without holding on to it.

Just because a crisis isn’t happening to you doesn’t mean it isn’t happening in you.

But now you have tools, awareness, and the ability to choose your response, not just react.
That’s the transformation. That’s healing.

Final Thought

Monday, 14th April 2025, is to date the hardest day I have ever experienced on earth. JB entered surgery at 11.30 am, and at 9.30 pm that evening, I received a call from the surgeon to advise that, while long and complicated, it had all gone well, and he was being moved to the ICU.

Did I sigh with relief? Of course not, I had cherished and held my fear for weeks, and it wasn’t possible to just drop it, no matter how much I wanted to. But I did do some deep breaths, and I did celebrate the step in the journey, and I did acknowledge the bubbling feelings in my chest.

This wasn’t just about my love’s heart surgery. It was about my own heart and learning its parameters in a new land of fear in love. It was learning about what resilience I had, how I could use self-care, and acknowledging that there would be further healing once JB was safe.

I breathed through the fear and kept my heart open. I stayed present as best I could and acknowledged the anxiety-driven thoughts as they passed. I understood that fear was not failing. That’s what healing looks like. It’s not perfect, it’s really messy, it’s a roller coaster, and it’s present.

Are we still going to Bali? Absolutely, we are. Our plans, while slightly delayed, have not changed. Right now, we just focus on JB getting better.

Has a medical emergency ever triggered your old trauma responses?

I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share your story in the comments.

FAQs

Q: Can love really re-trigger trauma that I thought I’d healed from?

Yes. Trauma is stored in the body. A new experience, even a loving one, can bring up fear from the past if it mirrors those feelings of helplessness or loss.

Q: What should I do when I feel triggered by someone else’s crisis?

Start with grounding techniques, allow yourself to feel what’s there, and remind yourself this moment is not the same as before. You are safe now, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.

When Fear Comes Back: Trauma Tiggers during a Medical Crisis