Healthy Love, Unhealthy Love, and the Stories We Inherited

Written by April Wazny, LCPC, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor

April Wazny specializes in trauma-informed, evidence-based therapy. Passionate about helping others heal, she works alongside individuals and families to process generational trauma and build lasting emotional resilience.

---

Many people come into therapy asking some version of the same question, “Why do I keep ending up in relationships that hurt?” Or more quietly, “Why does love feel so hard?” These questions aren’t a personal failure. They’re often rooted in what we were taught love was supposed to look like, long before we had language for it. From a trauma-informed perspective, love is not just a feeling. It’s a learned experience, shaped by early attachment, family dynamics, cultural messages, and generational survival patterns.

Love is learned before it’s chosen

We don’t enter relationships as blank slates. We carry nervous systems that learned early on how to stay safe, connected, and valued. If love in childhood was:

• inconsistent

• conditional

• emotionally unsafe

• chaotic or unpredictable

The body may later confuse intensity with intimacy or familiar pain with connection. This doesn’t mean caregivers intended harm. Many families pass down relational patterns unconsciously, doing the best they can with what they were given. But unhealed trauma doesn’t disappear, it repeats until it’s recognized.

Unhealthy love: When survival masquerades as connection

Unhealthy love often feels powerful at first. It can be passionate, consuming, or deeply familiar. But underneath, it’s driven by survival strategies, not mutual safety.

Unhealthy love may include:

• Feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions

• Walking on eggshells to keep the peace

• Mistaking control, jealousy, or volatility for passion

• Fear of abandonment that leads to self-abandonment

• Losing a sense of identity to maintain closeness

For those with trauma histories, these patterns aren’t choices, they’re adaptations. The nervous system learned that love required vigilance, over-functioning, or emotional shutdown to survive.

Healthy love: Safety before intensity

Healthy love often feels unfamiliar to people raised in chaos. It may even feel “boring” at first, not because it lacks depth, but because the nervous system isn’t in constant threat response.

From a trauma-informed lens, healthy love includes:

• Emotional safety and consistency

• Mutual responsibility (not rescuing or fixing)

• Clear boundaries without punishment or withdrawal

• Repair after conflict, not avoidance or escalation

• Space to be fully oneself without fear of loss

Healthy love doesn’t demand self-erasure. It allows both people to stay whole.

Generational cycles: What gets passed down

Generational trauma shapes beliefs like:

• Love means sacrifice.

• Conflict means abandonment.

• Being needed equals being loved.

• I have to earn care.

When these beliefs go unexamined, they quietly guide partner selection, communication patterns, and tolerance for harm. Breaking generational cycles isn’t about blaming the past, it’s about bringing awareness to patterns that no longer serve us.

Healing begins when we ask:

• Is this love, or is this familiar survival?

• Am I choosing from fear or from safety?

• What did I learn love was supposed to cost me?

Healing is not about “choosing better”, it’s about becoming safer

Trauma-informed healing doesn’t shame people for their patterns. It recognizes that the body seeks what it knows until it learns something new.

As healing happens:

• Boundaries feel less threatening

• Calm begins to feel safe

• Self-worth no longer depends on being needed

• Love becomes something we participate in, not something we endure

Healthy love grows when we learn to offer ourselves the safety we once sought from others.

A gentle reminder

If you recognize yourself in unhealthy patterns, it does not mean you are broken. It means you adapted. And adaptation can be unlearned. Healing love is not about perfection. It’s about awareness, compassion, and choice, often practiced slowly, imperfectly, and with support. And every time someone chooses safety over familiarity, a generational cycle begins to shift.

Visit my website for more info!

Read more from April Wazny, LCPC

---

April Wazny, LCPC, Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor

April Wazny is a trauma-informed therapist and founder of Winora’s Hope Counseling. She’s passionate about walking alongside those who are hurting, helping individuals and families heal from generational trauma and reclaim their wholeness. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Liberty University, April’s work explores the lasting impact of inherited trauma and the power of safe, compassionate connection in the healing process. Through both her writing and clinical work, she creates space for people to feel seen, supported, and empowered in their journey.