How to Avoid Trauma Bonding Relationships

The more you heal, the more you will attract healthy people

Relationships are important to personal growth. Healthy reliance on others helps us take risks, relieve stress, affirm us, motivate us to heal, and live our best life. Unresolved childhood trauma, however, can negatively impact relationships and personal growth.

ACE Relationships

“Misery loves company” is a relevant expression for survivors looking to be understood. The world does not offer a lot of space for the expression of pain. Trauma survivors are often told to leave their past behind and get on with their lives. They respond to society’s ridiculous expectations with guarded interest in relationships.

Survivors of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) often live in silence. Contrary to the popular notion of shame, survivors often hold their experiences of trauma close to their guarded heart to avoid being hurt. Hurt comes from being misunderstood or unsupported. Beyond the hurt, survivors often live with a paralyzing fear of abandonment.

Many survivors of trauma have experienced relationship abandonment repeatedly. The pain of failed relationships is always compounded when there is unresolved trauma. Separating the breakup from the trauma is beyond difficult. The difficulty comes from survivors’ unconscious belief that sharing trauma should create a permanent bond.

Unprocessed or unresolved trauma keeps old tapes playing in survivor’s heads. The tapes often remain highly classified, meaning, they keep the tapes secret from the world. Often, the only person who gains access to the information is another person with similar experience. This type of relationship is known as “trauma bonding.”

Survivors of adverse childhood experiences, such as physical or sexual abuse, family mental illness or addiction do not follow an optimum trajectory of development. Their development needs are often unmet by at least one of the following ways.

• Reversed caregiving. Children begin to take on adult responsibilities as early as three years of age. They may have to care for younger siblings or parents. A three-year-old can stick a bottle in an infant’s mouth while a parent is recovering from a hangover. A six-year-old can clean a house when mom is depressed. A 10-year-old can de-escalate an irate parent to keep them from harming a family member.
• Lack of safety. Over 50% percent of childhood abuse takes place inside the child’s home. The closer the kinship between victim and violator, the less likely a child is to disclose the abuse. Instead, children often adapt by normalizing the abusive relationship. Secrecy may become the marker for intimacy in the child’s world.
• Unpredictability. When uncontrolled mental illness, including addiction, characterizes a family, a child cannot successfully predict the ongoings of daily life. Their roles in the family are undefined or unstable. They cannot rely on being a priority to caregivers and may be confused about their role in the family. Their responsibilities may switch erratically between adult and child roles.
• No sense of belonging. Any of the above scenarios can cause a child to have no sense of belonging. Families that have high conflict relationships may also create confusion for children about their loyalty. Children may not feel important to anyone. The child may resort to harmful behaviors to get attention. On the other hand, they may resort to perfection tendencies in an effort to get noticed.

When adults have backgrounds that required survival instead of growth and development, they often do not know how to build healthy relationships. Unprocessed emotions and behavior patterns of childhood experiences mean adult survivors unconsciously carry outdated scripts into relationships.

Unprocessed or unresolved trauma keeps old tapes playing in survivor’s heads. The tapes often remain highly classified, meaning, they keep the tapes secret from the world. Often, the only person who gains access to the information is another person with a similar experience. This type of relationship is known as “trauma bonding.”

Trauma bonding relationships initially feel safe. Someone who has experienced trauma can relate to someone else who has experienced trauma. Disclosure can be made without the sense of shame that survivors may carry. Not every behavior has to be explained because survivors feel implicitly understood. Finally, both survivors can exhale. What could go wrong? Everything!

What’s Wrong with Trauma Bonding

Trauma bonding relationships is a case of the blind leading the blind. Two people with unresolved childhood trauma relying on one another to fill in the gaps of their childhood are likely to cause each other more pain. A relationship will crash when neither person knows how to drive.

Unlike childhood, adult relationships cannot be sustained with secrets. Adult survivors often assume that sharing secrets is a permanent bond because of the secrets they held for their families when they were children. Instead of disclosure bringing release, it creates more anxiety within the relationship. Childhood patterns are recreated at the unconscious level.

Trauma partners develop a relationship with the expectation that the other person will take care of their emotional needs. Neither partner may have any idea how to take care of their own needs.

The partners often create (unhealthy) circumstances to strengthen their bond. They may increase the shared financial debt, bring a child into the relationship, or even use violence to maintain the bond. The relationship becomes a ticking time bomb. When it explodes, the original trauma is magnified.

Shifting Away from Trauma Bonding

The most helpful step you can take to avoid trauma bonding is making new friends, lots of them. The more socially isolated you are, the more vulnerable you are to trauma bonding. Survivors are often not good at relationships because of a lack of experience. They don’t have casual relationships. Every relationship is serious.

People who have healthy relations tend to have a greater variety of relationships. Recognize yourself as a whole human being, not just a trauma survivor. Draw on other aspects of your life to make friends. Instead of using your trauma as a litmus test to see if someone will stay, leave your trauma experience out of the relationship while you get to know a person.

Don’t get involved with a person thinking you are waiting for the right time to tell them about your past. Let go of the secret as a secret. Talk about your past when relevant, not as a rite of passage in a relationship.

However, don’t withhold your trauma experience as a secret as if the person is on trial. Don’t get involved with a person thinking you are waiting for the right time to tell them about your past. Let go of the secret as a secret. Talk about your past when relevant, not as a rite of passage in a relationship. Do not make disclosure a point of no return.

Building Stronger Bonds

When you begin to build a relationship with someone try not to get caught up in just your feelings. Evaluate the person’s lifestyle early on to assess if it is compatible with yours. See them as a whole person, not a potential partner, lifelong friend, or confidant. Let them just be a person independent of your needs.

Be open to relationships with people from different demographic backgrounds than you. The most compatible person may be your least likely suspect. Make sure you explore their perspective of the world, not just invite them into yours.

Your ideal friendship may be with someone 20 years younger or older than you. Your intimate companion may be a different race than you. Your most supportive co-worker may have a different gender orientation than you.

Attracting healthy people can be tricky if you have never been in a healthy relationship. Healing is important to attract healthy people. Stop worrying about relationships with others and focus on healing your relationship with yourself. The more you heal, the more you will attract healthy people.

References

Aces Too High. Aces Too High News. https://acestoohigh.com/got-your-ace-score/. Retrieved June 2, 2019.

Ambruster, E. & Witherington, D. (2016). Adult Attachment and Parental Bonding: Correlations Between Perceived Relationship Qualities and Self-Reported Anxiety. The Professional Counselor, Volume 6 (1) p. 33–49. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1109924.pdf. Retrieved June 1, 2019

Arousal Conflict. Changing Minds http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/cia_arousal_conflict.htm, Retrieved June 2, 2019.

Bakari, R. (2019). Nobody is Normal, So Just Be Yourself. Medium. https://readmedium.com/nobody-is-normal-so-just-be-yourself-44b5d6994e2e.

Healthy Versus Unhealthy Relationships. Hall Health Center. University of Washington. http://depts.washington.edu/hhpccweb/health-resource/healthy-vs-unhealthy-relationships/