Understanding the Warning Signs of Trauma Bonding
Empower Yourself & Break Free From Its Chains
Key Points
A person in this kind of relationship must find a therapist, friend, or confidant. They must also know they deserve love and do not need to stay with their abusers.
Narcissists make their victims believe they cannot exist without them, and everything that goes wrong is the victim's fault, not the abuser's.
Narcissists will suck the life out of their victims and leave them drained of all self-worth.
Remember, the victim has the control, not the abuser. They don't need to appease or protect the vile behavior, and they're not bound to these sick and twisted animals. Instead, they must claim their freedom and self-respect.
Victims equate childhood abuse and chaos to love and normalize it in their adult relationships as chemistry. It's not. It's familiarity with trauma from their caregivers.
Many confuse trauma bonding with Stockholm syndrome. It's not the same. With Stockholm syndrome, the victim creates an emotional bond with the abuser, the perpetrator. Whereas in trauma bonding, the relationship happens at the speed of light. It's based on cycles of unhealthy patterns, such as inconsistency, invalidation, dehumanization, and chaos.
Some of the typical traits seen in people with these types of relationships are how they speak of their new lover as:
absolute bliss,
amazing,
over the top,
beautiful together,
or the adage, we never fight.
They'll also mention how this new feeling is chemistry. But it isn’t. What they don't realize, they're familiar with the abuse received from childhood and classifies it as normal behavior. Therefore, they bond to the abuse and its cycle of trauma they're accustomed to.
Childhood
When people face severe abuse in childhood from their caregivers, they end up as adults who romanticize it as chemistry. Why? Because to them, the abuse and trauma equate to love, “trauma bonding.”
It's an attachment where they justify, appease and rationalize the abuse from their protectors as healthy. When, in fact, it’s unhealthy behavior. They take these bonds created as love into their adult relationships that are highly controlled and filled with conflict and constant tension. Their partner refuses to change their mindset because, to them, they're not the problem. They do no wrong in their own eyes — meet the narcissist.
The Relationship
In healthy relationships, ties are not based on traumatic experiences. Instead, they’re reassuring, which, to some, is considered boring. Whereas in trauma-bonded relationships, they move fast. They're exciting and keep the person involved coming back for more. But in the end, leaving the victim filled with void and neglect. In this world, chaos equals love, which moves in cycles. But it's not love. It's abuse.
You'll often hear the victims make excuses for their abusers with statements like, "It's ok, they speak without thinking, they don't mean it." Have you heard this before?
Here are some signs which expose these kinds of situations.
You'll feel like there's something wrong with you.
You're the problem with why the abuser is unhappy. But you're not; it's them. They make you feel:
limited in all your abilities,
mentally and emotionally exhausted,
unworthy and worthless,
like damaged goods or
ashamed of yourself.
Without them, you believe you cannot do anything. They are master manipulators with one goal, to wear their victims down so they give up any fight left in them.
These individuals are the devil walking the earth with zero empathy.
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