The Cycle of Trauma Bonding
Trauma bonding is a response to ongoing abuse in a relationship. It happens when a person forms a deep attachment to someone that causes them harm in the form of physical, psychological and/or emotional abuse; and our bodies can’t distinguish between the different forms of abuse, it’s all traumatic. A trauma bond typically forms into a cycle and is based on an imbalance of power. The cycle of trauma bonding has been compared to the carrot and the stick theory. In a narcissistic relationship, the carrot relates to the stage of love bombing, and the stick relates to the stages of devaluing, and discarding. It’s also important to understand both our attachment style and how our autonomic nervous system plays integral parts in trauma bonding.
Attachment Style
We each have an individual attachment style, meaning how your early emotional bonds with caregivers impact how you seek out new relationships. There are four different attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant and disorganized. For example, an anxious attachment style develops when a young person felt insecure with their primary caregivers, possibly because one or both parents were not emotionally available. An anxiously attached person will typically be attracted to a person who gives them that same insecure feeling because it’s what they know. That’s a lot to take in, I know, it was revolutionary for me. And if an anxiously attached person hasn’t done the work to become securely attached, they become the perfect target for a narcissist.
When comparing a trauma bond cycle to the carrot and the stick, it makes sense that an anxiously attached individual would feel a sense of familiarity. An anxiously attached child learns to cope by pleasing in order to get carrots instead of sticks. We hustle for our sense of safety and security. In adult relationships, this leads to aligning ourselves with the perpetrator rather being hostile towards them. In order to escape the trauma we disassociate from our bodies and override the truth our bodies are telling us. This is not our fault. We have to sacrifice ourselves and what we know to be true in order to keep connection and feel safe. Find out more about attachment styles along with a quiz to determine your style here.
Autonomic Nervous System
Our autonomic nervous system is made up of two parts: sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system engages the fight/flight/freeze response alerting us to danger while releasing cortisol and adrenaline into our bodies. When we experience ongoing abuse of any kind, our sympathetic nervous systems stay in overdrive. The constant chemical release of adrenaline and cortisol is unhealthy and over time causes extreme stress leading to physical and mental illness. Even in the short term, you may experience depression, anxiety, digestive problems, short term memory loss, headaches, etc. The parasympathetic system is the calm after the storm. It releases dopamine and norepinephrine into our bodies allowing us to calm down and get back to our baseline of balanced regulation.
Using the carrot and stick concept, the parasympathetic nervous system is engaged when we experience the carrot of love bombing, and our sympathetic nervous system is engaged when we experience the sticks of devaluing and discarding. Read more about the stages of narcissistic abuse here. Our sympathetic nervous systems are in constant overdrive seeking relief and trying to get back to the carrot stage. So rest assured, you’re not crazy, this is your body’s natural response to unhealthy attachments and ongoing trauma due to abuse. Find more information about the effects of a dysfunctional autonomic nervous system here.
What are the Signs of Trauma Bonding?
You feel stuck and powerless in the relationship but want to make the best of it.
You don’t know if you trust the other person, but you can’t leave.
You’d describe your relationship as intense and complex.
There are promises of things getting better in the future.
You “focus on the good” in the person, despite behaviors you know are abuse.
You think you can change your abusive partner.
Your friends and/or family have advised you to leave the relationship, but you stay.
You find yourself defending the relationship if others criticize it.
The abusive partner constantly lets you down, but you keep trying anyway.
You often don’t feel seen, understood or heard, but continue to try.
How Do We Heal?
Healing starts with awareness and understanding. Understanding how my brain and body were hijacked into the spin cycle and learning how to trust my emotions again were very healing. Here are some first steps that were helpful for me:
Document the abusive incidents. Keeping a record sounds negative, but it will help you see the cumulative account of the abuse. When we’re in the cycle, we lose the ability to see clearly because the abuse is intermingled with positive moments and memories which may have included other people. And by seeing the record of abuse, we stop being blind to it. Click on the link to find out more about the theory of Betrayal Blindness.
Learn ways to get back into your trusted body. We can do this when we sit for five minutes every day, breathing deeply. Paying attention to our breath and the sensations we feel in our body builds mindfulness so we can better tune into the signals our bodies are giving us.
Go into nature. Nature can develop our ability to listen and notice. It connects us back to basic things without all of the noise our lives bring.
Become an emotional scientist. Getting curious about why we’re having an emotion can help us become more embodied so we learn to look inward and build trust in what we’re feeling.
Ask for help. The reason I became a narcissistic abuse recovery coach is because of the nature of the interactive process which helped me see the whole picture. Awareness is the gateway to sustainable change.
Reach out for a complimentary consult if you feel you might be trauma bonded. Coaching is a great process for building awareness, understanding what you’re going through and learning new tools to heal and stay out of spin cycles in unhealthy relationships.
