Have you ever wondered why people stay with abusive partners?
Or maybe you are one of those people who is with someone or wants to go back with them.
Your friends may say “you’re so lucky you got out of that relationship.
That guy or that woman was so abusive to you.”
But in your heart, you feel longing to go back to them.
That’s even though they insulted you or abused you or said terrible things lowering
your self-worth.
Today on Reaction Reset, I’m going to talk about trauma-bonding and why that traps people
into staying in abusive relationships.
Trauma-bonding involves a pattern of behavior where you’re abused and then rewarded.
If your partner abused you in any way, emotionally or physically.
Then all of a sudden, they did a bold, passionate move like bringing you five hundred roses
or just going out of their way in something exorbitant.
It’s more likely that that’s going to set up a pattern in your life.
It’s going to trick you and going to tell you that this is what love looks like.
It’s similar to Stockholm syndrome.
Where a kidnapper takes you and then you form an attachment with the kidnapper.
Trauma-bonding is easy to mistake for love because it’s a pattern of behaviors.
Most of the victims of trauma-bonding grew up in abusive or chaotic homes., where they
saw their parents or caretakers being mean and abuse each other, but there was always
a bold actin of love.
This is what traps and tricks the mind.
Children who grow up with abusive parents learn that love and abuse go together, so
you expect abuse in order to get love.
Here are some things you may tell yourself that make it so difficult to let go of your
abusive partner.
He didn’t mean to get angry.
She puts up with me and you know how moody I can get.
She came from a bad home.
I can help him change.
He or she deserves a fair chance, they didn’t mean to hurt me.
Essentially what happens is the abused partner starts blaming themselves, they want to take
the blame.
The reason they want to go that is because it keeps their fantasy of what love looks
like intact.
This is the same fantasy that was developed in their childhood as a coping mechanism.
It’s very difficult to break trauma-bonding patterns as an adult.
But you can do it with professional counselling and guidance.
The most important and easy way to fix it is to prevent it from happening in the first
place.
I’m going to give you four ways that can protect you from meeting someone that you’ll
end up trauma-bonding with.
First, taking your time getting to know someone and don’t become intimate with them until
you know their full background and history.
It’s a fast-pace world.
We meet people and before we know it, we’re sleeping with them and getting more and more
involved.
Once you’re under their influence, if you are a child that grew up in any kind of abuse,
you’re going to be more likely to be attracted to an abuser.
Look out for signs of feeling pressured or manipulated into something.
Don’t go fast.
Many times, abusive people want to move the relationship quick because they want control
to manipulate you and your environment.
It’s very important that you take control of you and use your assertiveness and your
boundaries.
Speak up for yourself and do not let anyone seduce you or give you a sad story of about
why you should try to make up your mind fast and join them any quicker.
Thirdly and maybe the most important, be very mindful about how they respond and respect
your boundaries.
When you draw a line, when you say something like “I want it done like this or this is
how I do things.”
If they react or they start shaming, you or blaming you or sulk.
These are signs of someone who does not respect your boundaries and they’re going to try
to break them down, it’s not healthy.
Lastly, pay very special attention to how your new date describes their ex or anybody
else in their family that they didn’t like.
I say this because many times what happens is when people are abusive, they will not
accept responsibility and they shift the blame all to one person.
Someone who cannot take responsibility for their actions is not only emotionally immature,
but many times they’re abusive or control freaks.
If you are a victim of trauma-bonding, it’s very important that you give yourself a little
bit of slack and understand your desire to go back to your ex is mostly a desire of having
love.
Since that’s a distorted and sick version, if that’s the only version that you ever
knew then it’s only natural that you want it.
In a healthy relationship, you don’t have to earn anything.
You don’t do anything.
You basically are loved because of who you are.
You can express yourself honestly and a partner would accept it.
They will want to know more, and they want to understand you.
As you go forward, you’re looking for a health relationship.
Resisting urge to go back to distorted, sick loving and let’s take new opportunities
to practice finding someone new.
Remember, change your reaction, change your world.