Support Group with Kathryn: How to Recognize and Break Traumatic Bonds

Article reposted from: https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/trauma-bonding#breaking-them

Signs of a traumatic bond

Trauma bonds can look a little different depending on the type of relationship, but they tend to have two main characteristics.

A cyclical nature

First, they depend on intermittent reinforcement. In other words, a cycle of abuse.

It’s generally easier to leave a situation that’s entirely bad, one where the abusive person never offers any kindness or concern for your well-being. If you don’t believe someone will ever change, you probably won’t stick around.

But in abusive relationships, your partner occasionally does treat you well. They might bring you gifts, call you their soul mate, take you out, or urge you to relax.

These gestures can be confusing and disarming, especially if thought of as signs of permanent change.

Eventually, love begins to overshadow the fear of further abuse. As you slowly regain a sense of trust, you might ignore or suppress memories of their past behavior until the cycle begins again.

A power imbalance

These bonds also rest on an underlying imbalance of power. In this dynamic, you might feel as if they control you to the point where you no longer know how to resist or break free.

Even if you manage to leave the relationship, you might have a hard time breaking that bond without professional help.

You might feel incomplete or lost without them and eventually return, simply because the abusive cycle is familiar and you don’t know how to live without it yet.

Other key signs

Here’s a look at some other characteristics of traumatic bonds:

• You feel unhappy and may not even like your partner any longer, but you still feel unable to end things.
• When you do try to leave, you feel physically and emotionally distressed.
• When you say you want to leave, they promise to change but make no effort to actually do so.
• You fixate on the “good” days, using them as proof that they truly care.
• You make excuses and defend their behavior when others express concern.
• You continue to trust them and hope to change them.
• You protect them by keeping abusive behavior secret.

Trauma bonds can linger, even when the abuse happened long ago. You might struggle to stop thinking about someone who hurt you and feel the urge to reach out or try again.

Here’s a test that might help, though it’s not at all conclusive:

Ask yourself whether you’d encourage a loved one to leave a similar relationship. Answer honestly.

If you answer yes but still feel powerless to leave your relationship, that’s a good indicator of trauma bonding.

Why it happens

People who haven’t experienced abuse often struggle to understand why people remain in abusive relationships. They might believe you’re perfectly capable of leaving.

In reality, though, the trauma bond makes this extremely difficult.

People don’t choose abuse. They also can’t help the development of trauma bonds, which are driven by some pretty strong biological processes.

Breaking the bond

People who experienced abuse in childhood often feel drawn to similar relationships in adulthood, since the brain already recognizes the highs and lows of the cycle.

A history of trauma can make it even harder to break trauma bonds, but you can learn to stop this cycle. These tips can help.

Know what you’re dealing with

Recognizing the existence of the bond is an important first step. When it comes to abuse, of course, this is often easier said than done.

To find evidence for abuse and recognize signs of trauma bonding, here are some things to try:

• Keep a journal
  • Writing down things that happened each day can help you begin to identify patterns and notice problems with behavior that may not have seemed abusive in the moment.
  • When abuse does happen, note what happened and whether your partner said anything afterward to excuse it.
• Consider the relationship from another perspective
  • Pretend you’re reading about your relationship in a book. It’s often easier to examine negative events when you have some level of detachment.
  • Pay attention to the small details that make you uncomfortable or give you pause. Do they feel healthy to you?
• Talk to loved ones
  • It’s not easy to open up about abuse. Maybe you got angry or brushed off friends and family when they expressed concern in the past.
  • Yet loved ones can offer essential perspective. Challenge yourself to listen and make a real effort to consider the accuracy of their observations.
• Avoid self-blame
  • Believing you caused the abuse or brought it on yourself can make it harder to exercise your autonomy, effectively keeping you in the relationship.
• Remind yourself that abuse is never your fault, no matter: what you may or may not have done , how deeply you fear loneliness or a life without them, how many times you’ve already gone back
• You do deserve better. Replacing self-criticism and blame with affirmations and positive self-talk can help this truth begin to take hold.
• Cut off contact completely
  • Once you make the decision to leave, disrupt the cycle completely by stopping all communication.
  • If you co-parent, this might not be possible, but a therapist can help you establish a plan to maintain only necessary contact.
  • Create physical distance by finding a safe place to stay, such as with a relative or friend. Also consider changing your phone number and email address, if possible.
  • If you can’t do that, block them completely. They might get through with a new number, but ignore these messages and calls.
  • They might insist they’ll change, go to therapy, do anything, as long as you’ll just come back. These promises can seem pretty tempting.
  • Remind yourself, though, of just how many times they’ve already promised to change.
• Get professional help
  • While you can take action to begin weakening the trauma bond on your own, these bonds tend to hold fast. You might not find it easy to break free without professional support, and that’s absolutely normal.
  • A therapist can teach you more about the patterns of abuse that drive trauma bonding, and this insight can often provide a lot of clarity.
  • In therapy, you can also:
    • explore factors fueling the bond
    • work on setting boundaries
    • learn skills for building healthy relationships
    • confront self-criticism and self-blame
    • develop a self-care plan
    • address mental health symptoms related to long-term trauma and abuse
    • It’s generally recommended to work with a trauma-informed therapist. Professionals who specialize in recognizing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), particularly complex PTSD and the aftereffects of abuse, can often have the biggest impact for people working to overcome this specific trauma.

The bottom line

Abuse is never your fault. Neither is the development of a trauma bond.

It may take some time to regain a sense of self-worth and feel as if you’ve finally broken free, but support from a trained professional can make all the difference.