The Vicious Cycle of Trauma Bonded Relationships

When we hear about relationship bonding, we often think about relating to another human in a safe and healthy kind of way. The opposite of that is trauma bonding, where we end up bonding to our person for all the wrong reasons. We end up feeling incredibly attached to someone who ends up harming us.    In these trauma bonds, the victim often feels a strong sense of loyalty to the person who is actually abusing them. They mistake the abuser’s behavior for love. These can be heavy words to reconcile with, but the more we’re able to call out these patterns of abuse, the more the stigma of feeling stupid/shame will get lifted. We fall into these patterns because they feel comfortable or even addicting to us.    In the beginning, the person who is trying to ‘woo’ you can often be incredibly charismatic and appear to be kind or a ‘good person’. However, the relationship can quickly turn sour through manipulation, verbal abuse, and outright hurtful behavior. We then try to regain a bit of those initial feelings by adapting ourselves to seek their once-positive behavior through any means necessary. We have to understand that their initial love-bomb or kindness is not the reality to their actual character, but by then it can feel like it’s ‘too late’ and you’ve trauma bonded.    Continue Your Growth Journey: Kaminiwood.com