Emotional abuse is often confused with love by those who are caught up in cycles of abuse in a relationship. It’s easy to overlook trauma when abuse is disguised as someone caring for you.

What is trauma interconnectedness?

The definition of trauma bonding is “a strong emotional connection between the abused person and their abuser, which is formed as a result of the cycle of violence.”

Trauma bonding is a term created by Patrick Carnes, a somewhat controversial figure in the field of addiction counseling. This term was created as a way to explain the emotional bond that develops between an abuser and a victim in the context of emotionally and physically abusive relationships (often, but not always, those involving a narcissist).

Trauma bonding occurs for many people trapped in abusive relationships who do not realize they are being exposed to it. Because mental and psychological abuse exhausts you, you mistakenly associate feelings of trauma with love.

Related: 6 Harsh Reasons Why Smart People Stay In Toxic Relationships

What does enslaved trauma mean?

Trauma bonding is defined as a psychological response to abuse that occurs when the abused person forms an unhealthy bond with the abuser.

A person experiencing abuse may develop over time a type of empathy for the abuser, which develops after a long, repeated cycle of abuse followed by remorse, as the abuser somehow replaces the abuse with positive experiences.

Stockholm Syndrome is a form of traumatic bonding that is used to explain how an abused person can develop positive relationships with their captors or abusers.
What are the signs of trauma in abusive relationships?

1. Accepting blame for the abuse: “He didn’t mean to get angry. It was my fault.”
2. Feeling like you deserve the abuse: “He puts up with me and still loves me.”
3. Justifying the abuse: “He had a terrible childhood. I feel sorry for him.”
4. Believing in your ability to change the abuser: “I can help him change with love and support.”
5. Justifying the abuse: “He deserves a fair trial. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

Notice how the abuser’s behavior is always justified and the victim blames themselves as if the abuse was their fault.

This is how trauma victims minimize and deny their abuse in order to maintain a positive image of the abuser, while distorting reality and being misled by the imaginary love they so desperately want to believe is real.

When you desperately yearn to be loved, you can easily be drawn into an abusive relationship and misread the signs as love rather than abuse. But how do you know if you’re truly in love or stuck in a fantasy blinded by trauma?

Is it love or shock?

Have you ever fallen in love hard and fast, then collapsed into the harsh reality of abusive behavior? Were you then surprised that it was so difficult to break up from such a toxic relationship?

True love doesn’t usually happen that strong or that fast. True love is constant and grows slowly as you get to know someone on deeper and deeper levels.

In contrast, being attached to someone through a trauma bond can feel attractive and magical, but it is not true love; It is an attachment that is formed through trying to feel unhealed emotional wounds.

Take, for example, a painful association with a narcissist. Trauma bonding with a narcissist means that the narcissist makes you believe that by repeating this abusive cycle, they can feed your needs for validation and love, and make you believe that what they are doing to you is normal.

Do narcissists feel a trauma bond? Narcissists feel the power of manipulation only through trauma bonding, as it is addictive for them. However, they do not feel the actual trauma bond because their theory is that if they didn’t feel it, others wouldn’t be able to hurt them.

The narcissist may also become abusive and habitually form trauma bonding as a result of trauma from his or her upbringing or past relationships.

Vulnerability to trauma attachment often stems from insecure attachments developed during repeated abusive or traumatic childhood experiences with a caregiver. This relationship pattern becomes internalized as a learned behavior pattern that carries over into your relationships as an adult.

If you were abused by your primary caregiver as a child, you probably learned to associate love with abuse. This becomes the model for how you learn how to communicate with others and form relationships.

Related: The Most Critical Marriage Lesson I Learned In Couples Counseling

What does a trauma bond look like?

You expect that to feel loved, you must also be abused – and that’s the way it goes.

For example, if you were abused for non-conformity as a child, you will likely feel abandoned and unworthy. To relate to your abuser, you learn to meet his needs and make him happy so that you can receive love and approval. Over time, this became the basic equation of love.

If you were abused as a child, you protected your relationship with your abusive parent by maintaining your view of him as a “good” parent, reducing feelings of anger or hurt to feel loved, safe, and connected.

You protected yourself by burying these feelings and convincing yourself that there must be something wrong with you because you upset your parents. You’ve come to believe that it’s all your fault, you’re bad, you’re a brat, and you have to make up for it if you want to be “good enough” to deserve their love.

What causes trauma bond?

This coping mechanism becomes a model for how you see yourself in relationships as an adult.

You see yourself as bad and deserving of punishment, so you have to be good to get the love you want. In essence, you are still longing for your abusive father or mother to give you the lost love you wanted, and you are repeating the self-destructive pattern with abusive partners while fighting hard to make them love you.

When you feel like you’re not good enough, your desire for love can be the perfect bait for an abusive narcissist to latch onto. When you meet all their needs, you will feel loved and satisfied enough, allowing you both to see their abuse as justified.

When you justify or minimize abuse and blame yourself for it, you remain in denial about the fact that you are being abused – just as you did when you were a child.

Admitting abuse creates a fear of abandonment, and awakens your original pain. This causes you to defend and protect yourself even more by delving deeper into denial and self-blame.

Facing reality and abandoning the fantasy that you are truly loved triggers your fear of abandonment, as well as your associated feelings of not being good enough. You reenact the same attachment pattern you first learned with your abusive parent and you cannot let go of the abuser. Instead, you think you should figure out how to be good enough to get them back.

Victims of abuse will return to their abusers over and over again, rationalizing it this way each time as the wounds of trauma bind them stronger together.

How to break the trauma bond?

The first step in breaking a trauma bond is to recognize that it is happening, notice it, and put a name to it.

Sometimes, you may need to be more diligent and pay attention to signs and patterns of abuse, and write them down so you can recognize love and distinguish it from abuse and hurt. You should also write down what your partner says or does to justify the abuse.

It’s also helpful to look at the relationship as if you were viewing it from another perspective. The most important thing is to talk to your loved ones like your friends and family, people who support and care for you, and avoid blaming yourself.

Once you are ready to leave your partner, do just that by cutting off all forms of contact. If you’re finding it difficult to break free, you may need to seek professional help, in which case the National Domestic Violence Hotline offers free, confidential support.

Related: 4 Less Obvious Signs Of Gaslighting Most People Miss

How can you prevent yourself from having a traumatic attachment to an emotionally abusive person?

There are some steps you can take. Remember: your safety and sanity are the most important things.

1. Always take your time when getting to know someone and learning about their past.
2. Be careful not to jump straight into a committed relationship just because things seem good and exciting.
3. Look for red flags and signs of abusive behavior, such as feeling pressured, controlled, or belittled.
4. Make sure to respect your boundaries. If they aren’t, don’t take things any further.
5. Make sure that what you hear is really what you get and that no hidden truths are emerging with excuses.
6. Watch out for someone who is overly attractive or who showers you with too much attention too soon.
7. Be wary of someone who says all their exes are “crazy,” doesn’t feel like anything in their past was their fault, or sees themselves as a passive victim.
8. Remember that if someone seems too good to be true, there’s a good chance they’re not being completely honest with you.
   Don’t confuse trauma with true love; It will blind you.

True love is not abusive. You shouldn’t need to jump through hoops with someone to get the relationship to fit your fantasy version of what love should look like.

True love is not conditional on pleasing someone. True love means feeling loved while expressing yourself authentically, dealing with life’s ups and downs, and seeing each other as you truly are.

Obtaining self-love means letting go of any remaining ties to an abusive parent or partner so that you can free yourself from the dysfunctional attachment pattern of searching for love and approval to feel good enough.

Truly loving yourself means engaging in self-care and protecting yourself from abuse so that you can be yourself and feel love for the real you.