If a connection with a significant person causes you to experience low self-esteem and a rollercoaster of feelings such as guilt, fear, anger, confusion, and sadness, your relationship may be based on trauma bonding. Even though this person has mistreated or abused you, you feel powerless to cut ties with them. This might be your partner, parent, family member, or friend.
What are Trauma Bonds?
Trauma bonding is a common pattern of attachment in abusive relationships. The complex emotional attachment that develops between a person who is abused and their abuser is often characterized by cycles of abuse and reconciliation. Understanding the 7 stages of trauma bonding is critical for identifying these harmful behaviors so that you can set on the path to recovery and empowerment.
Defining Trauma Bonding: A Psychological Perspective
Trauma bonding is an intense emotional connection formed between someone who has been abused and their perpetrator. In relationships with trauma bonding, the victim develops a profound bond with their abuser despite the hurt being done.
Why does this happen? When we experience highs and lows with someone, particularly in stressful situations, our brains might mistake fear and reliance for love and devotion.
Affection is an essential and natural human need. This desire is powerful throughout childhood when children rely on their caretakers to meet their needs. Even if a caregiver is violent or abusive, a child must maintain a bond with them because it depends on them. In trauma bonds, the victim may confuse abuse with love and remain devoted to the abuser. This is why someone may find it difficult to quit a toxic relationship and escape abuse.
Understanding trauma bonding is crucial for breaking away from these detrimental patterns and beginning the healing process.
The 7 Stages of Trauma Bonding Explained
1) Stage 1: Love Bombing
Abusive relationships are always intense; and they typically begin in the same manner. The abuser may shower their new partner with excessive attention and adoration. The victim is drizzled with presents, praise, and gifts to the point where they feel cherished and worshiped.
However, this intense affection has nothing to do with genuine love and care. It is a manipulative tactic for winning the victim’s confidence and devotion. The goal of love bombing is to gain control by indebting the victim so that the abuser may call them out on all they have done for them. As the relationship goes on, the initial outburst of love and attention turns into manipulation and abuse. Before they recognize what is going on and protect themselves, the victim has already been deeply involved in a relationship.
2) Trust and Dependency Development
In the following stage, the abuser usually deliberately tests the victim’s trust and dependency on them. For example, the victim may have been emotionally abused but later received apologies and loving gestures from their abuser. Also, at first, the abuser might appear committed or use future-faking, promising a happy future together. These good times make the victim feel safe and trusting, believing the abuser cares about them. Over time, the victim depends on the abuser more and more for emotional support and approval.
3) Criticism and Demeaning Behavior
After trust and dependency have been established, the abuser’s love and attention will fade, to be replaced with emotionally distant and cold behavior. They will become excessively critical, constantly demeaning, and pick on their victim for everything. This will undermine the victim’s self-esteem and sense of reality.
For example, the abuser might constantly criticize the victim’s appearance, abilities, or intelligence, humiliate them in public, and then apologize and shower them with love and attention again. The victim may eventually start to think that the abuser is right, depending on the abuser’s approval or affection, seeing these few positive moments as important. This keeps the cycle of abuse and trauma bonding going.
4) Reinforcement Through Rewards and Punishments
A key part of trauma bonding is reinforcement through rewards and punishments. The abuser switches between being kind and abusive, making the atmosphere unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the victim desperately seeks times of love or reward, developing a psychological dependence on the abuser. Their sense of self-worth gets worse, making it harder to break away from the abuser.
5) Isolation and Control
At one point, the abuser will cut off the victim’s connections with friends and family. This isolation from important support systems increases the victim’s dependence on the abuser. It intensifies the abuser’s influence and control over the victim’s life, making it harder to leave.
6) Resignation and Acceptance
Throughout this stage, the victim gives up and wrongly thinks they can’t get better treatment or leave the situation. Caught in the cycle of abuse, the victim will eventually feel powerless to change the situation. Since no dialogue or reciprocity with the abuser is possible, the victims, at some point, start to accept the abusive behavior as something that they deserve, believing that such dynamics are a normal part of their relationship.
7) Addiction to the Cycle
In trauma bonds, the cycle of abuse repeats itself, with periods of abuse being followed by phases of reconciliation and affection. Such a pattern manipulates the victim into feeling dependent on the abuser, reinforcing the attachment and deepening the trauma bonds.
How to Recognize Your Own Trauma Bonds
A cycle of honeymoon phases and intense conflicts in a relationship is a common characteristic of trauma bonds.You may feel confused, struggle with low self-esteem, and struggle with self-trust, constantly seeking the abuser’s validation to feel worthy. These bonds can also dissolve your boundaries, leaving you in constant unease. You may feel even more isolated by cutting off ties with loved ones. The resulting emotional turmoil, which is a mix of love and fear, causes confusion, which makes it hard to break free from abuse.
Finding Your Path to Healing from Trauma Bonds:
To break free from trauma bonds, you need to identify and acknowledge the patterns of abuse. But you are not alone on this path. Get help, reconnect with your social support network, and start a journey of self-discovery and healing.
Moving Forward: Gaining Strength from Understanding Trauma Bonds
Coaching can provide a safe setting to gain insight into the nature of trauma bonds and empower you to build resilience and reclaim your strength.If you seek to gain a deeper understanding of yourself as you navigate the path to recovery and healthier relationships, contact me to set up a free empowering conversation.
References
- https://crossroadsantigua.org/7-stages-of-trauma-bonding/
- https://www.sequoiabehavioralhealth.org/blogs/7-stages-of-trauma-bonding
- https://uncovercounseling.com/blog/7-stages-of-trauma-bond/
