Even though your heart is being stomped on and shattered into a million pieces, you still struggle to let go of the toxic relationship. WHY?!!
You know you need to let go, and at this point, you may even want to, but why do you continue to have intense cravings for someone who doesn’t think twice about causing you emotional pain?
Why are you holding onto a relationship with an emotionally abusive narcissist? Sounds crazy right?
One would think that letting go of a toxic relationship would be easy, but they would be dead wrong.
What is a Trauma Bond?
Patrick Carnes coined the term trauma bond and describes trauma bond definition as:
“Trauma bonds are dysfunctional attachments that occur in the presence of danger, shame, or exploitation. Trauma bonds occur when we are bonding to the very person who is the source of danger, fear, and exploitation.”
In simple form, these relationships are developed through manipulation. The abuser appears to love them, gains their trust, breaks them down, and then offers love again (especially when they do something that pleases them).
Carnes’s traumatic bonding theory work shows this cycle creates an addiction that our body chemically craves. The victim becomes loyal to their own detriment. They now have a dependency on someone abusive fulfilling their emotional and spiritual needs.
Trauma Bond Withdrawal
Trauma bonding is the drug that makes abuse feel like love.
These bonds are literally like breaking a drug addiction, but it becomes much more manageable when you understand your body’s signals and have the tools to navigate through them.
If any of this resonates with you, keep reading, as you might be confusing a trauma bond with genuine love for a narcissist.
In truth, you might be in one of the most toxic relationships, one that deteriorates both body and soul. Throughout and following a trauma bond, you’ll likely encounter severe physical and mental health challenges.
Narcissists Thrive in Trauma
Narcissists thrive in trauma bonded relationships which consist of high emotional intensity, seduction, betrayal, and power imbalances. However, their partners don’t.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is defined by a persistent pattern of behavior marked by an inflated sense of self-importance, an intense need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. Individuals with this disorder often exploit others to satisfy their own desires.
In a relationship, the narcissist’s goal is to gain control over their partner through manipulation and emotional abuse. This can manifest in various forms such as gaslighting, love bombing, silent treatment, and using guilt or shame to make their partner feel responsible for their happiness.
Trauma bonding isn’t limited to romantic relationships; it can happen in any abusive relationship. These bonds develop in situations such as:
- Domestic Violence
- Narcissistic Relationships
- Military Training
- Child Abuse
- Cults
- Fraternities & Sororities
- Kidnapping
- Sex Trafficking
- Elder Abuse
- Prisoners of War
- Concentration Camps
- Incest
Why Do Victims Stay?
From an outsider’s perspective, leaving an abusive relationship might seem like the most logical step, and they wouldn’t be mistaken.
However, for someone in a trauma bond, the abusive cycle becomes an addiction, making the thought of life without the abuser seem unbearable. It can feel utterly soul-crushing.
“Only the one who hurts you can comfort you, only the one who inflicts the pain can take it away” Madonna’s lyric is relatable to trauma bonds and abusive relationships with narcissists.
Leaving abusive relationships is far more challenging than exiting healthy ones. Such bonds often alternate between abuse and positive reinforcement, and with each cycle, the victim’s connection to the abuser intensifies.
Myths About Abuse
Myth: Only people who are broken can be trauma bonded and stay in a toxic relationship.
This is untrue. It’s a common misconception that people who are broken and have low self-esteem are the only ones in a trauma-bonding relationship.
I’ve heard so many survivors say that in the past they would have asked someone in their position “Why did you stay if it was so bad?” in a shaming and victim-blaming tone.
People who feel happy, whole, and confident can become trauma bonded.
Their life can actually reflect all of the above. They can have an amazing career, life, and relationships. They are happy in the present and don’t feel traumatized.
You see, people can store trauma in their bodies. These can be formed in childhood, even from events we can not remember, but our bodies and subconscious remember.
If we do not release the trauma, it can be dormant within us until activated by something external (an abuser) and this can start to create a trauma bond.
Breaking Trauma Bonds
Often people know they’re in a toxic relationship but if or when they leave, there is an intense craving similar to a drug addiction withdrawal.
This feeling is frequently mistaken for love, leading the victim to do almost anything to preserve the relationship.
This is not merely an analogy. According to biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher,
“the brains of those in adversity-ridden relationships become activated in an eerily similar way to the brains of cocaine addicts”.
Except there is one huge difference between the drug addictions and trauma bonded relationships.
Society has a lot of knowledge on drug addictions and how they can destroy your life but most people don’t understand trauma bonding or that it even exists.
While many are familiar with drug withdrawal symptoms, few realize that similarly intense withdrawals from a trauma bond can keep someone trapped in a toxic relationship.
Much like other addictions, individuals may go to great lengths to maintain the relationship, misinterpreting these intense feelings as true love or a “soul mate” connection.
In doing so, they may compromise their own values and beliefs, remaining in a relationship they would have otherwise ended if not for the effects of trauma bonding.
What Happens In The Brain?
During a trauma bond, our body’s natural stress response activates the sympathetic and limbic systems. When the sympathetic activation is in control, our prefrontal cortex is shut off. This is the part of the brain that helps us with risk analysis and long-term planning.
It’s not intellectual or logical, it’s emotional.
The emotional part of our brain takes over and victims are unable to see the relationship for what it really is.
The habitual ups and downs of the relationship create imbalances in the victim and their brain becomes highly addicted.
Victims can become attached to anything that helps them get through a traumatic event — anything our brain associates with safety and during a trauma bonding experience the abuser becomes safety. (I know! Strange but it will make more sense once we talk about stages)
This is why, when victims are in the throes of a trauma bonded relationship, they can be so quick to defend their abuser and justify, minimize, or ignore the bad behaviors.
They are only thinking emotionally and they believe this person loves them.
Trauma Bonded Signs
Abusive relationships often lead to trauma bonds, where intense emotional connections develop as a way to cope with the abuse. Signs of a trauma bond include:
- Engaging with individuals who exploit and harm you.
- Fixating on those who have hurt you, even when they are no longer present in your life.
- Feeling compelled to reach out to someone you know will cause more pain.
- Remaining loyal to relationships characterized by betrayal, with people showing no signs of genuine change.
- Seeking understanding, validation, and a sense of being needed from those who clearly do not care.
- Prioritizing individuals who have been harmful to you, even though they would never reciprocate such loyalty.
7 Stages Of Trauma Bonds
Trauma bonding is formed over time. Each time the victim goes through the abuse cycle, their bond with the abusive person can strengthen. As emotional attachments become stronger, their judgment becomes more clouded.
This cycle slowly reshapes how they perceive themselves and the relationship.
While they may justify the relationship, they are not completely blind. At some point, they may accept the relationship is toxic, maybe abusive, and feel they should leave, however, by this point, the relationship means so much to them and is hard to let go of.
Even when they try, an overwhelming craving towards their abuser is formed. This withdrawal symptom is often mistaken for love and they are pulled right back in.
Let’s take a look at the trauma bonding stages to better understand what’s happening.
1. Love Bombing
This trauma bonding stage feels absolutely amazing. You are showered with the love you’ve deeply desired and the emotional connection feels genuine. It feels like you’ve finally met your soul mate and nobody else could compare. You can receive excessive affection, attention, validation, and even gifts. They make you feel like you are more than enough.
Your emotional connection develops really quickly because the narcissist is tapping into your deepest desires in a partner and mirroring those desires and your own characteristics back to you.
It’s strategic and powerful in creating a toxic bond.
2. Trust and Dependency
Because this person has tapped into your deepest desires, your trust strengthens and you become more vulnerable. Maybe more vulnerable than you have ever been with someone.
You start depending on the external love and validation of the narcissist as it feels so good and you may have been deficient from these internally. Slowly, they will become your main or only source of love and validation.
This shifts the power dynamic. At first, you will be showered with it, but as you give more trust and dependency to the abuser, they will start to condition you and only provide you with this when you are doing something they like. You will start to neglect yourself more and more as you put all your energy into them so you can receive.
3. Devaluing and Criticizing
Narcissists will never seek relationships where the energy put into each other is balanced. This is where an even bigger shift occurs and the imbalance is detrimental to you.
They will devalue you and become more demanding and critical. This can be subtle and show up in a passive-aggressive way or overt.
As the cycle repeats, they will give less and less while expecting more and more from you.
4. Gaslighting and Manipulation
When you bring up concerns, problems, or try to defend yourself, the narcissist will gaslight and project the blame onto you.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual making them question their own memory, perception, or sanity.
The two goals are to confuse you so you stop trusting yourself and for you to accept the blame.
The more you are gaslighted by someone you love and trust, the less you will trust yourself and start believing their warped reality. Narcissists will convince you that if only you put more effort, forgiveness, and energy into the relationship everything would be better, so you continue to try harder and harder because you believe in who they were in the love-bombing stage.
5. Resigning Control
You start becoming confused by the gaslighting and manipulation. You can be exhausted from trying to be heard and all you want is to get back to the love bombing stage.
You can surrender to the narcissist in hopes of getting back their love, validation, and positive attention.
You give into them.
This might look like you do anything and everything for them. This could mean you dropping the disagreement and just agreeing with them.
This could mean you stop doing something you really want to because the narcissist doesn’t approve and will let you know that in a subtle way or over way. It could also mean you go against your values or ignore a boundary being crossed.
You expect people that love you to have your best interest and don’t see the damage here, but what’s happening is you are handing over your personal power.
6. Loss of Self
Your focus will be on the narcissist and you will neglect yourself. The abuse will escalate and become worse. You will give them every bit of energy possible until there’s nothing left.
You will lose yourself in a trauma bond if you continue to stay. It won’t take long for you to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and not recognize the person looking back at you. You will slowly start to change yourself just to get breadcrumbs of what feels like love.
Your soul will be starved and you will become a shell of a person
You stop pointing out bad behavior. Your boundaries are pushed little by little until they don’t exist. You stop doing the things you love. You start distancing yourself from any support system including family. Your values are given up and things you would have not hesitated to leave a relationship for are now occurring often. You don’t trust yourself and start to rely on the abusive person heavily. Your confidence and self-esteem are at an all-time low.
Your soul’s purpose becomes to please the narcissist and survive. Not live, just survive.
7. Trauma Addiction
Your relationship is a series of highs and lows that start to swing more dramatically. Your body is becoming chemically addicted to the abuse cycle.
Your body is stressed during the lows causing high levels of cortisol and during the highs, you are getting dopamine spikes. Your body will crave the highs. These highs are during the love-bombing stage. Your body has a cycle of dependency wickedly similar to drug addiction.
When the criticism, manipulation, and gaslighting start again your body will search for the love bombing stage.
Attempting to leave may trigger intense withdrawal symptoms, such as rumination, which can feel more daunting than remaining in the relationship.
However, this isn’t a reason to stay, as with healing and support, these symptoms will eventually subside.
Withdrawal symptoms can include:
- Intense rumination and thoughts about the narcissistic abuser
- Strong cravings for the love-bombing phase of the relationship
- Flashbacks to moments of happiness in the relationship
- Anxiety and fear about leaving or breaking things off with the abuser
- Physical symptoms such as headaches, muscle tension, and stomach issues
- Emotional instability and mood swings
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Feelings of guilt or self-blame for leaving the relationship
- Isolation and loneliness without the abuser’s presence and attention
- Fear of being alone or starting over without the abuser’s support
- Loss of identity and sense of self after being controlled by the narcissist
- Depression and feelings of hopelessness about the future
Overall, withdrawal symptoms can be both physical and emotional, making it difficult to break away from an abusive relationship. It is important for a victim to seek support.
Final Thoughts
Trauma bonds are intense. They have been described as harder to break than a hard drug addiction. Even people who have been discarded or left the relationship years ago can still be experiencing the symptoms of this traumatic bonding.
Our traumas can be stored inside our bodies and cause us to have flashbacks, fixate, refrain from working through the grief, and obsess over the abusive partner. People who have never had this experience will just not understand.
But, you can heal from this. For those of you that are still in the relationship or finding yourself going back, even though it feels worse to leave this person, it will eventually get better than the unhealthy relationship could have ever offered you… EVER!
“Sometimes we have to travel through a darker time to get the light.”
How long do trauma bonds last?
The duration of trauma bonds can vary for each individual and depend on various factors such as the length of the relationship, severity of abuse, and available support systems. For some, it may take months to break free from a traumatic bond while for others it could take years.
It’s important to remember that healing is not a linear process and there may be setbacks along the way. It takes courage and strength to leave an abusive relationship and continue on the journey towards healing. Seeking help from therapists, support groups, or loved ones can also greatly aid in this process.
Remember to be patient with yourself and give yourself time to heal. The most important thing is taking that first step towards breaking free.
What’s the difference between healthy and trauma bonded break-ups?
Well, all relationships can be painful when they end, but the difference in a trauma bonded relationship is the breakup is similar to an addict coming off a hard drug, literally.
Unlike healthy relationships, trauma bonded relationships have an abuse cycle and the victim is actually addicted to this abuse cycle, so when they try to leave the relationship, they will get withdraws just like an addict would, they will get intense cravings to make contact with their abuser, and they will feel like they are dying without this person in their life.
These intense feelings can be mistaken for love. Often victims believe this person is their soul mate, dispite the abuse. And many times, they have not even acknoledge the relationship as abusive.
Because, in their early childhood, they were conditioned for abuse. They may not even see the red flags or the abuse like a healthy person would because it’s feels so fimilar. Their abusers behaviors can actaully feel like love they know. And this bond they have with their abuser strengths over time, so everytime they go through the abuse cycle it’s getting stronger.
People will often ask the victims, why didn’t you just leave, why did you keep returning to the relationship if it was abusive, why can’t you just forget about your ex and move forward.
And this makes the victim feel very shameful, because logically, they may know they needed to leave and they may know this relationship is not good for them, even if they have not accepted it as abusive.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard I don’t want to love this person anymore, I don’t wan to go back to the relationship, I feel trapped, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know I need to leave but I just can’t. I can’t say no to this person.
Just like most people, the victims themselves don’t understand it. They don’t understand how our early childhood experiences can have such an impact on our choices and experiences in our adult life.
So, trauma bonded breakups are nothing like healthy relationships, period.
