Off the top of my head, there are three classes of ‘traumatic bonding’:
- bond created when someone harms/traumatizes you in the context of a relationship
- bond created when you go through something traumatic with someone
- bond created when you and/or another person share your trauma together
We use “trauma bond” casually for all three situations
…and invariably, whenever someone uses the phrase, another person pops up in the comments being pedantic about how “trauma bond” only applies to victims with an abuser. They’re technically right, but it’s extremely annoying, since “trauma bond” (in my opinion) best describes the situation where two people in a crisis have bonded to each other through the crisis. But it honestly could also describe when two people share their trauma with each other.
So I’ve been workshopping better language for each iteration of the ‘traumatic bond’:
- A “trauma bond” definitionally is the ‘abuse bond’ a victim has toward an abuser with whom they are in a relationship. (It could be considered “pathological attachment” since the victim is attached to someone despite being harmed by them.)
- A “trauma-forged bond” (crisis bond?) is what happens when we go through something traumatic with another person, not because of that person. Not only is a bond forged, but the level of intimacy is reinforced since people who did not go through the crisis cannot relate to or understand it. (I was originally thinking along the lines of “trauma-induced bond” but I think I like “trauma-forged bond” better because it’s clear the bond comes through experiencing the crisis together.)
- A “trauma-sharing bond” is when you and/or another person create a bond (intimacy), or attempt to create one, by sharing trauma. This one is a trap because it can rush intimacy with another person before you really know who they are. When we do this, we think that sharing our trauma equals ‘sharing who we are’, when in fact it is only over time that we can truly know someone and build intimacy. Trauma-sharing is a shortcut to emotional vulnerability. This doesn’t mean we can’t appropriately share our trauma with someone else (who has consented) but that we shouldn’t confuse the closeness this fosters as ‘knowing someone’, even if you’ve been through the same things. The reason this is different than the intimacy built through a crisis bond, is that that intimacy was built being with the other person and seeing how they act/react in a crisis. Witnessing someone’s character, and seeing how they treat you in a crisis, is vastly different than a person giving you a narrative about what they have experienced. One is direct knowledge not only of someone’s character but also how they treat you, and one is basically a story you are being told.
I’m landing on:
- trauma bond
- trauma-forged bond/crisis bond
- trauma-sharing bond/trauma-disclosure bond
(I also considered “trauma-linking bond” and “trauma-intimacy bond” but I think they run into the same problem that “trauma bond” has, which is that they aren’t clear enough about the origin of the trauma and the relationship dynamic the bond exists within.)
See also:
A trauma bond occurs when you have become emotionally attached to someone that abuses you.
Emotional attachment is not the same thing as love. It can co-exist with love, but extreme and intense emotional attachment itself is not love. The attachment in a toxic relationship becomes a chain that binds, not something that lightens the yoke of the relationship.
See also:
- Trauma bonds often form due to repeated cycles of intense emotional experiences, where periods of abuse are followed by periods of kindness, creating a confusing and addictive emotional rollercoaster
- Intense relationships also tend to hijack all of a survivor’s relating capacity from this amazing website
- Trauma bonding
- Signs it is not love but a trauma bond
- 5 signs you’re in a dangerous trauma bond with a toxic person
- The 7 stages of trauma bonding
- Trauma Bonds are relationships with a dysfunctional cycle that keep people physically addicted to one another
- Undoing a trauma bond can mean undoing an emotional addiction to a person
- HOW OXYTOCIN CAUSES TRAUMA BONDING AND ATTACHMENT
- During a toxic relationship a dysfunctional attachment is formed
- Trauma bonds v. Authentic connection
- Types of trauma bonds
- Trauma bonding with a narcissist
- Trauma bonding is loyalty to a person who is destructive
- 10 Steps to Recovering from a Toxic Trauma Bond
- Trauma Bonding: How to recognize and break traumatic bonds
- Going no-contact gives us a chance to break trauma bonds
- You might be trauma bonded if…
- Why is it so hard to leave the narcissist in your life? <—– trauma bond through a blend of intermittent reinforcement and abuse bonding
- Trauma bonds involve a cycle of addiction where you keep coming back in hopes behaviors will change
- Narcissists use trauma bonding and intermittent reinforcement to get you addicted to them: Why abuse survivors stay: Exploitive relationships create betrayal bonds. These occur when a victim bonds with someone who is destructive to him or her. Thus the hostage becomes the champion of the hostage taker…
- What is a trauma bond? A trauma bond is an attachment to an abuser in a relationship with a cyclical pattern of abuse
- Healthy relationships nourish and support us. Like poison, a TOXIC relationship is one that is damaging to us.
- “I knew I was done with trauma bonds when I stopped betraying myself to be chosen.” – Nicole LePera
- When we confuse connection for love, we hold on to people that harm us <—– the difference between ‘love’ as a feeling and actual love)
- Abusive relationships are like bookends. The honeymoon period in the beginning is so sweet because they mirror your good traits back at you. By the end, you’re mirroring their awful traits back at them
- “Your partner is not supposed to be the pain and the relief. They should not be hurting you and also soothing you. That’s not love. It’s a trauma bond. That’s not how love works. It’s how abuse works. ” – Synthia Smith
- Trauma bonding isn’t healing
and while I’m at it:
- The REAL role and purpose of forgiveness
- The truth about forgiveness and why healing doesn’t require forgiveness
- The ‘forgiveness tulpa’, and how the false forgiveness paradigm perpetuates abuse dynamics
- The forgiveness imperative, and compassion
- The role of anger and pain in the healing process
- Before you can ‘hold on’ to negative experiences, negative experiences hold on to you
- The misunderstood role of blame in healing and why you should blame your abuser
- Forgiveness is for the purpose of preserving relationships
- “Forgiveness is usually confused with permission.” – u/ ThrowRAReallySadH, comment
- “When people insist on forgiveness, very often they’re not expecting it at all. What they’re expecting is FORGETTING, that the wounded party will simply pretend there is no damage and then nobody will ever need to examine what was done. forgiveness requires repentance, which requires changed ways.” – u/ smcf33, excerpted and adapted from comment
- Our pop-culture understanding of forgiveness is based in Christianity…but even Christians misunderstand the Biblical underpinnings of forgiveness
- “Everyone wants OP to make peace because her pain is inconvenient. They don’t care if she hurts for the rest of her life as long as she shuts up about it. Their indifference is cruel. Their relentless badgering for OP to ‘forgive’ is a form of bullying too.” – u/ LissaBryan, comment
- ‘Forgiving someone is packaged [incorrectly] as allowing this person back into your life so they feel “forgiven” for what’s happened.’ – Nicole LePera (adapted)
- A lot of what we see in terms of healing is prescriptive (forgive! let go! move on!) tends to actually be DESCRIPTIVE.
- Trauma Recovery Rubric