Letting Go of the Trauma Bond

Letting Go of Trauma Bonds

 

The theme of the week has been trauma bonds. I had two clients who reported that they are beginning to break their trauma bonds. One is starting to realize that she has a trauma bond, and another got triggered by an old trauma bond. mercury is retrograde, so it’s the perfect time for old stuff to hit you on the back of the head so you can resolve it once and for all. If this is happening to you too, stay tuned. I hope to give you some information that can help you to let go of any trauma bonds that you have too.

 

So, the first thing we need to do is talk about what a trauma bond is. There are actually two different types. One is positive and helps us to survive. The other one is destructive. We tend to focus on the destructive type, but let me start with the positive one, okay.

 

Whenever there is a shared trauma that people to through together and survive, that can create a strong bond because these people shared something that is so far outside the norm that isn’t happening in the outside world, and only the people who went through it with you could possibly understand.

 

In old school movies like Full Metal Jacket, you see guys in abusive boot camp situations where they are verbally abused, beaten up, and brought to the brink of tears. They used to say that they were killing the boy to make the man - that kind of thing. And when the guys graduated, they all let out a collective sigh of relief that they survived it. And there were no buddies like those guys who went through that with them. 

 

We have a kinder, gentler military now that observes human rights, so I don’t think it’s that way anymore, but old school military was definitely that way. 

 

War survivors are the same. They call the world war II generation the greatest generation not just because the young men who went off to fight, but because these were the people who survived the Great Depression. They went through the Spanish Flu epidemic that killed 675,000 Americans. Women went to work to support their families when the men went off to war. People planted victory gardens to feed their families and lower the price of food so that the government had enough to feed the troops. So this was a generation of sacrifice and hardship. People went through it all together.

 

Siblings who grow up in abusive households can also have this survivor bond that helps them to maintain sanity and keep going. Shared sacrifice and horror can give people resilience so they bounce back. The trials can make them feel closer, so they feel like they belong to each other. 

This type of trauma bond is actually beneficial. People need stress to grow, and while I wouldn’t wish any hardship on anyone, if you have to go through it, it’s best to do it with someone by your side.

 

I believe that this the ultimate appeal of Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12 step groups. It gives people a way to make sense out of something that didn’t make sense. It gives them a way to understand it and feel that they weren’t alone and aren’t alone now. The twelve steps help, but the community, support, understanding, and the feeling that someone else knows what it’s like to be in the same boat is hugely healing. 

 

It’s a lot easier to bond with someone who shares that experience, right? Because you feel understood and not judged.

 

Now, the other trauma bonding is the one that you hear talked about in psychological circles. This type of trauma bond happens when the receiver of the abuse develops an attachment bond to the abuser, and that dynamic gets repeated in subsequent relationships.

 

 

If you think about the parent/child dynamic, it’s easy to see why this would happen.The child depends upon the adult for everything. They need their love, food, affection, clothes - everything. Without the parent, the child would die, so it’s adaptive to cultivate mom and dad’s love. Even if mom screams at you and dad hits the child, the child quickly learns to disappear, soothe the parent, or maybe take care of the parents’ needs so that they can regain their affection and approval. 

 

We all learn how to love from our parents. We all seek love that looks like the love that we learned. So, if one of our parents was distant and cold, that’s what love looks like to us, so we will find someone who ignores us. Maybe we will have to chase them and do a little dance to get them to see and appreciate us.

 

If one of our parents beat us and said things like, “I’m only doing this for your own good” or “I’m doing this because I love you” or even if they do it and then take us out for ice cream, that’s creating a program that says, “Love hurts.” So, we might search for someone who hits us, verbally abuses us, or treats us badly. A good, decent person might appear boring or just not interesting. We will say we lack chemistry, but in reality, the brain is looking for that abuse.

 

Now the curious thing is that the brain knows in an instant - even in the early beginning when both people are on their best behavior and are being their highest and best selves. The abuse may not come until a year into the relationship, and then we will say we didn’t see it coming, and things changed. Nope. It’s chemistry. We know. We know when someone is lighting us up the way our parents did.

 

There are three trauma bonding patterns that form during childhood - and the childhood doesn’t have to be so bad that you were in foster care or black and blue. Neglect, having an absentee parent because of jail, working, or just out partying could be enough. Having an immature parent or one who just didn’t have the skills to be a great parent could be enough to create a trauma bond.

 

So, here they are:

 

The first is the anxious attachment. This is the one where the child thinks, “I’m not okay. You’re okay.” So this parent was inconsistent. Sometimes she’s indifferent, sometimes, she’s sensitive and sometimes unresponsive. The child always feels on guard and off center because they don’t know which parent they are going to get. They aren’t sure when they are going to be criticized again or how strong the disapproval will be. 

 

Even when it doesn’t come, they are anticipating it and will react as if it happened, even when it didn’t. They are often people pleasers who use this as a way to head off the negative attention. These kids can appear impulsive, aggressive, unsociable at times, clingy, dependent, emotionally out of control, and overly considered with controlling the environment by being nice. 

 

They think they are really nice and considerate people, but others can find them manipulative and sneaky. They can also be confused as to why people treat them like a doormat when they are so nice and agreeable. 

 

These people tend to chase love. If it feels like they are losing someone’s affection, and it doesn’t matter if we are talking about a lover, friend, or neighbor, they will bend over backwards to be appealing - even if the one who is walking away is abusive and it’s better to let them go. It doesn’t even matter if they don’t really even like that person. The idea of not being liked is so strong, so they will hold on to a bad relationship for far too long.

 

That’s a trauma bond, guys. 

 

The second type of attachment type of trauma bond is the Dismissive - Avoidant style. This happens as a result of cold, strict, critical, distant, or irritable parents who don’t do emotions. They expect the child to be obedient and independent and quite possibly invisible. 

 

The child interprets this as “I’m okay, you’re not okay” because they often end up being the independent people that they were reared to be and learn how to not need people. Deep inside they feel rejected, scared, stressed, and emotionally isolated, but since their feelings are shut down, they may be totally unaware of this and certainly don’t show it.

 

The third type is the most extreme type and this is the disorganized attachment style. This happens when the parent illicit feelings of fear from the child- so I’m talking about situations where the parent is emotionally out of control, loud and angry, violent, punches the walls, is mentally ill, is an alcoholic, sexual abuse for sure, physically violent for sure. If the parent threatens suicide or to leave, that would definitely create fear in the child. Anything scary, unpredictable, and extreme can create this, so don’t be afraid to think outside the box. 

 

For example, homelessness might do this even if there was no violence or anger because of the unpredictable and potentially dangerous situations that the family might find themselves in. Moving a lot could do it. Lots of military kids have to move a lot and there are a specific set of problems that those types of families endure. 

 

The big feature in this one is the unpredictability. If the child can’t predict when the abuse is coming, he is on edge all the time. He can’t develop a sense of trust in anything because there is no safety. There is no pattern. There is no way to adapt to a situation that is so chaotic. 

 

The child has a “I’m not okay, you’re not okay” view of life and feels angry, scared, sad, and has a hard time being alone. This is the type that is most likely to have mental health issues and addiction and have a hard time being alone. They will go with even the least suitable person just to have someone around. 

 

These folks believe they are unlovable. They are waiting for rejection and are afraid of intimacy because in their minds, it leads to hurt and disappointment. They may even self-sabotage just to break the tension and make it come sooner. 

 

This type is most likely to be passive, non-responsive and have low-self esteem. If there is someone in need of rescue, this is your guy. This one is most likely to connect with the anxious attachment type person because they will please you and chase you and be your hero forever. 

 

It might look like a match made in heaven, but at some point the anxious attachment style person gets resentful of being used and unappreciated and blows up. This doesn’t usually last though. Once the dust settles, they go right back into their pattern of Hero and Victim or Runner and Chaser.

 

The big difference between the disorganized style and the dismissive style is that the person with the disorganized style wants connection and love. The dismissive style is more likely to reject it. 

 

 

You don’t have to be in a romantic relationship to have a trauma bond with someone. It could be employee/boss, being a member of a cult, human trafficking is another example where we see this, and also elder abuse situations like in nursing homes.

 

You’re most at risk if you had one or more parents who didn’t have the healthiest parenting styles, but even if you had a perfect childhood, you could still develop a trauma bond later in life through Stockholm Syndrome. This happens when someone is taken captive and develops an emotional bond with the captor. 

 

It sounds kind of crazy that a pimp could sex traffic a prostitute, beat her, and she still cares for him and remains loyal to him, but this is one type of example. It happens because we’re all hard wired for survival. When we get into emotionally overwhelming situations, we go into fight, flight, flee, or fawn. 

 

Stockholm syndrome is a way of fawning. If I emotionally attach myself to you and bond with you, maybe you will care about me and won’t kill me. 

 

So, let me tell you what led to my two client’s breakthroughs last week. We talk about the patterns of abuse. We talk about what it looks like, what the motivations are, how to see it coming so that everything is visible. And after a while, they are able to see it coming. They can see things as they are.

 

In the beginning, they aren’t able to say, “No thank you” but there can’t be a conscious choice to say no if you don’t even see it for what it is. It’s just an automatic pattern.

 

You break off one bad relationship and start another one. It’s lather, rinse, repeat. The cycle just keeps on going - same relationship, different partner.

 

So, in both these cases, they were able to say, “Uh oh. Here’s that pattern knocking on my door. No, thank you” which was a big break through.

 

The client who is starting to realize that there is a trauma bond is practicing mindfulness. That’s really just another way of saying she’s paying attention. she’s not on auto pilot anymore. She is journaling a ton, asking great questions, and has turned off the auto pilot.

 

She’s living consciously. 

 

so rather than letting that program and habit run silently in the background, she’s starting to question. “What does that mean?” and “Did that really happen or was that just in my head?” She’s starting to stand up for what she wants and realize that nothing bad happened if she said no or if she wanted vanilla instead of chocolate.

 

It’s funny how many ways that people can stay small and quiet and fear that something bad is going to happen just because they need to take a potty break or want to get some work done instead of go out. But they won’t let themselves be comfortable or do what they need to do because they are afraid of how that might rock the boat - even when there is no threat of rocking the boat.

 

When you have a trauma bond, doing little things like this are huge. 

 

Taking care of yourself and putting yourself first are huge. Something as basic as this can seem impossible. but let me tell you, I take care of myself first every morning.

I eat a hot breakfast, exercise, and sometimes do a little meditation before I open email, before I take care of anyone else because I may not get another moment for myself that day. If the day gets hectic, I want to be “on” for whatever greets me, so I fuel up, calm down, and do me first. 

 

I end the day the same way. I might journal, meditate, read a book, or do something calming and soothing so that my mind goes into sleep in a quiet and settled state.

 

Now you might ask what does that have to do with breaking a trauma bond, so let me tell you.

 

Trauma bonds are a way of saying “I need you.” Now humans are social creatures. We do need each other to survive, but we don’t need dysfunctional people who will bring us down. We need safe people who help us thrive and challenge us to grow, people who make us smile, and help us with resources. We need people who give our lives meaning. 

 

But with a trauma bond, we’re attached to those who make us feel the way we did when we were weak, defenseless kids. So, when we do things like practice self-care, we are weakening those bonds by taking care of our own needs. 

 

Yes! You see? The more capable you are of caring for your own needs- both emotional and physical - the more flexibility you have in saying yes or no to what other people offer. I don’t need you to wake me up and make sure I’m in a good mood if I can do that for myself. Got it?

 

That leads into positive self talk. That’s another thing that my client who is starting to see her trauma bond play out is now doing for herself.

 

People with attachment issues often say things like: I’m no good; I told you this wouldn’t last; I can’t do it; I always mess things up; and if they knew who I really am, nobody would like me. That’s the trauma talking. There is a little person inside who felt that, but it’s not happening now on the outside. And being mindful and present now helps you to say other things like:

 

this is temporary; it’s okay to have a bad day; this is just one disappointment, it’s not my whole life; and it’s not personal. It makes it easier to say it and believe it. 

 

People with healthy attachment styles believe things like this. It’s where they live every day. A set back is a small thing, not something to stay in bed over all day. A disappointment might only occupy a five minutes of their day, not a week. And a cancelled lunch date frees up time to do something else, it doesn’t send them into a fit of feeling unworthy to live. 

 

People have lives. They can go hours without texting back, cancel plans, and decide that they don’t want to date you without having a meltdown over it because they know that it’s not that serious and that life doesn’t revolve around them. Life’s a lot easier when you feel emotionally safe.

 

And that’s really what the trauma bond is all about. Healing that space inside of you that feels unsafe so you don’t keep searching out the same type of people who trigger that within you and keep it going.

 

You see, that’s really what the trauma bond is doing. In a really convoluted way, it’s your little child self seeking the safe, familiar love that you found at home. Now, I know that abuse, neglect, criticism, and indifference aren’t really love, but try telling that to your little kid self. If that’s all you knew, that’s what you look for. 

 

Now my client whose old stuff was triggered had most of this behind him already, so when it rose up to bite him in the back of the head, he was really surprised. How does this trauma bond still have power if you’ve let it go, worked on healing the past, and either let those relationships go or have transformed them into more healthy versions?

 

We all have things in shadow, and by shadow, I just mean things that are not obvious or known to us. We find them when we start to get all confused, blocked, and stop making sense to ourselves. When we are acting out of character or getting testy, that’s another sign that we’re being triggered.

 

So, we lean into it. Get curious. Play with it and tease it out. Listen to your body. If you’re feeling nauseated, revulsion, getting emotional, or feeling cravings for an unhealthy person, a substance, or a bad situation, that’s a giant sign that your head and heart are disconnected. You’re missing something. Listen to your body.

 

There is some aspect of the trauma that is still living in your body. It is crying to be freed. So, you need to engage in some type of process to let it out. Talking won’t do it. Studying and learning won’t do it. The talking/thinking brain doesn’t talk to the lizard brain or the vagus nerves that are keeping that fear in place. So, you have to do more than talk about it. 

 

I have lots of clients who come to me saying, “Oh, that used to bother me, but that was a long time ago” and as soon as we ask the body if it’s resolved, it starts doing all kinds of things like the heart speeds up, the muscles get tight, the stomach feels warm, and that’s how you know, nope! This is still an issue that you need to let go of. Unless we release it in the body, the pain and the running, chasing and avoiding love will stay.

 

There is no free lunch, guys. You’ve got to heal what you experience, even if it wasn’t your fault. It doesn’t matter to the body who was right and who was wrong. It just matters that you face it head on and let it go.

 

I’ve seen people avoid speaking their truth because they didn’t want to say it out loud. It’s like, if they say it out loud, it’s true and it will break them, but I’ve never seen that happen. It’s exactly the opposite really. When you speak your painful, ugly truth, it starts to release and let go. 

 

That actually happened too, this week. Someone said she couldn’t stop thinking about something she’d done about a decade ago. She couldn’t live with herself. It felt awful. I helped her get up the courage to say it. Now, you don’t have to say it. There are lots of ways to let go of things and keep them private, but in this particular case, I thought it was useful for her to just say it so she did. 

 

She felt the guilt, shame, and regret of it all, and it released in about five minutes. Seriously. It was about five minutes. A decade of grief let go in about five minutes. 

 

Emotions just want to move. When we stop holding them in, they move and release. They lose their power, and we move into a place of choice.

 

We can either continue to carry that victim status, those low self-judgments, and that small feeling, or we can grow and be the beautiful beings that we all really have the potential to be. 

 

Nothing is so horrible that it can’t be purified. Nothing. 

 

So, let me give you a quick run down on signs of a trauma bond so that you know if you have one. I want you to get that first step down at least today and that is to know what a trauma bond is so that you can see when you’re being influenced by it.

 

1. You fixate on people in your life who have hurt you even if they are no longer a part of your life.
2. You crave contact with people who have hurt you in the past and may hurt you again if given a chance.
3. You continue to engage with people who you know are taking advantage of you or exploiting you.
4. You are loyal to someone who has betrayed you even though there is no sign of change.
5. You want desperately to be understood, validated, or needed by someone who doesn’t care.
6. You go out of your way to continue to help, consider, or take care of people who have harmed you.

 

When we welcome these types of people into our lives, it comes from a place of yearning for that original hurt to be healed. It’s not going to happen by getting into the same situation again. You can’t heal from there. In fact, I will tell people in an abusive situation that the best I can do for them is to help them cope and prepare for the day when they can leave because there are three stages to healing. It’s crisis, working, and maintenance. You can’t heal from a crisis stage. If you are in the abusive relationship, you’re in crisis - even if you aren’t in pain every day.

 

So today’s topic is a big one. Letting go of the trauma bond is easier said than done. It will take more than a moment. But you can start today. 

 

Our path at the Let It Go Now Community is Ready, Release, Renew. We don’t let go until we have a solid base underneath us to give us the best chance for landing on our feet once we let go. So there is a lot you can learn there that can move you toward a healthy life.

 

And I’d like to just repeat that too. Just because you didn’t start out with a healthy, strong foundation doesn’t mean you can’t build one now. Even if you come from generations of people who didn’t get supported and loved well as children, you can be the first of your generation to break that trauma bond and start a new trend. 

 

The alternative is quite likely loneliness, isolation, and pain, so what do you have to lose but undesirable things that you don’t want anyway. You have a lot of good things to gain and a lot of unwanted things to lose, so it seems like a no brainer to me.

 

So, if you want some help, check out letitgonow.org for more information on that. We are in month two of the “365 days of letting go” challenge. If you want to challenge yourself to let go of the layers of stuff that is not you so your true self can shine through, you can check that out at lauragiles.org. I post a new idea every single day. If you follow me on MeWe, which is a social media platform, they are also posted there on the Let It Go page. Just search “Let It Go” and you will see my picture there. 

 

I really love the idea of a challenge and can’t wait to hear all about the ways your life is changing by letting go. Reach out and tell me in the comments. Or send me a question. I actually have some questions to answer and will get to that in a blog post or podcast soon. Thanks. for tuning in guys. I’m Laura Giles. See you next week.