Most of us have, at one point or another, found ourselves in relationships where we felt stuck. We couldn’t let go of someone, even when we knew they were hurting us. Or we shut down completely, unable to connect, trust, or even feel. We chased, we withdrew, we collapsed. These aren’t signs of weakness or brokenness—they’re trauma responses, deeply rooted in our early life experiences.

Trauma isn’t just about what happened to us—it’s about what happened inside of us when we didn’t feel safe, loved, or protected. Trauma responses are deeply ingrained, shaped by overwhelming experiences that become imprinted in the brain, other parts of the nervous system, the muscles and fascia, the internal organs, the psyche, and the subconscious mind. Over time, they become our default responses to stress, conflict, or emotional and physical intimacy.

Although these responses may have served a purpose at the time of traumatic events and other adverse life experiences, they often outlive their usefulness. Once they become habitual and unconscious, they can create deep emotional pain—fueling overwhelming fears of abandonment, reinforcing emotional numbness or avoidance, keeping others at a distance, and undermining your ability to form healthy, meaningful, and fulfilling connections with others.

The four core trauma responses are:

Fight

The fight response is about regaining control. It often shows up as anger, defensiveness, or the urge to dominate. In childhood, it may have protected you by making you harder to hurt. In adult relationships, it can manifest as conflict, reactivity, or attempts to control others to feel safe.

Flight

Flight is the urge to escape. It can look like perfectionism, overworking, anxiety, or staying constantly busy. In relationships, it often shows up as emotional avoidance, ghosting, or pulling away when things start to feel too intimate or overwhelming.

Freeze

Freezing happens when parts of your body and mind shut down in response to something that feels overwhelming or unsafe. This can happen in varying degrees—sometimes you go numb, dissociate, feel paralyzed, or emotionally check out. It often manifests as feeling disconnected from yourself or your partner.

Fawn

Fawning is the compulsion to appease. It looks like people-pleasing, chronic apologizing, self-abandonment, and the inability to set boundaries. In relationships, this often means tolerating behavior that hurts you just to keep the peace or avoid abandonment. For some, this response takes the form of chasing after the person who’s hurting them—trying to fix the connection at any cost. It’s a way to seek safety by merging with the wishes and demands of others, while forfeiting your own needs in the process.

Trauma responses aren’t failures of emotional intelligence—they’re maladaptive coping mechanisms. In many cases, they formed because what was happening at the time overwhelmed our capacity to emotionally and neurologically process the experience.

In those moments when our system became overwhelmed, the brain and body defaulted to whatever coping mechanisms it was capable of — shutting down, running, fighting, or appeasing. These weren’t conscious choices. They were automatic, unconscious responses triggered when something felt too big, too unsafe, or too threatening to process.

Over time, these responses can become deeply ingrained. And when they persist long after the original threat is gone, they limit our ability to connect, trust, or feel safe in relationships and in the world.

Trauma Bonding: When Love Feels Like Survival

Trauma bonds are powerful emotional connections that develop between someone who is abused and the abuser—especially when episodes of abuse are interspersed with moments of tenderness or affection. The term was introduced by Dr. Patrick Carnes and is rooted in the neurochemical and psychological impact of intermittent reinforcement.

This isn’t just emotional—it’s neurochemical. The drama, intensity, and dysfunction of the relationship generate a potent chemical cocktail in the brain. Oxytocin (bonding), dopamine (reward and craving), cortisol (stress), and adrenaline (survival and thrill) all surge and intertwine to reinforce the connection—alongside other neurochemicals that shape our emotional memory, arousal, and attachment patterns. The loving moments create a dopamine high, while the volatility triggers stress responses that keep your nervous system on edge. Over time, your brain becomes conditioned to equate emotional chaos with intimacy and connection.

Even when you consciously know the relationship is toxic, the combination of unprocessed emotions, biochemical imprinting, and other aspects of the stress physiology can keep you hooked. Your entire system may react intensely to the chaos, but often lacks the tools or internal resources to regulate, process, and respond in a healthier way.

Trauma bonds also form because a part of us is still hoping for resolution—still trying to get the love, validation, or safety we didn’t receive early on. We unconsciously recreate these dynamics, hoping that this time it will end differently.

Trauma bonding doesn’t only show up in romantic relationships. It also occurs in parent-child dynamics, sibling relationships and overly controlling religious or cultic groups, and even between survivors of disasters or crises who bond through shared trauma.

The Seven Stages of Trauma Bonding

Trauma bonding is based on manipulation and control and is especially common in relationships with narcissistic or emotionally unstable individuals. Abusive partners often operate in cycles—alternating between cruelty and moments of warmth and affection—that create confusion, instability, and emotional dependency. In such a heightened state of vulnerability, the one being mistreated begins to equate love with volatility. They cling to brief moments of connection and tenderness, even when those moments are fleeting and interspersed with criticism, neglect, and emotional — sometimes even physical — harm. What emerges is a powerful emotional attachment—one rooted in fear, misplaced loyalty, and an ongoing struggle to make sense of the emotional chaos.

Trauma bonds don’t form all at once—they develop in stages. It often begins with what feels like real love or deep connection, which creates a sense of trust. But over time, that affection starts to give way to criticism, control, and emotional manipulation. The person on the receiving end finds themselves hooked—holding out hope that things will go back to how they were in the beginning. This dynamic tends to unfold in a predictable sequence, often moving through seven distinct stages.

1. Love Bombing

The abuser showers you with affection, praise, and attention. It feels exhilarating and overwhelming. This phase builds trust and emotional dependence. In some cases, it’s a calculated setup to gain control. In others, it may not be fully conscious — just a reflection of the person’s own unresolved wounding or unmet emotional needs playing out in unhealthy ways.

2. Trust and Dependency

You start to rely on the abuser for emotional support, validation, and even basic decision-making. The bond deepens as your lives become more intertwined, and over time, that dependency grows. You may begin to pull away from others, making you more vulnerable to manipulation and control. What once felt like connection slowly turns into entanglement—one that’s incredibly difficult to break free from.

3. Criticism and Devaluation

As the dynamic continues to shift, the abuser begins to criticize, demean, or withdraw affection. What was once praise turns to judgment, and the emotional highs start to vanish—replaced by fear, shame, and confusion. You find yourself working harder to regain their approval, not realizing the goalposts are constantly moving. The longing for the connection you once felt only deepens the trauma bond, making it even harder to break free.

4. Manipulation and Gaslighting

Manipulation and gaslighting often follow. The abuser distorts reality, denies what happened, or blames you for their behavior. You start to question your memory, perception, and even your sanity. Over time, this constant erosion of truth wears down your self-esteem, leaving you more confused, emotionally dependent, and less likely to challenge the abuse. You begin to rely on them more and more for a sense of what’s real. Still, you find yourself pulled deeper into the trauma bond—often without even realizing it’s happening.

5. Resignation and Giving Up

As the trauma bond deepens, you feel worn down—exhausted by the cycles of manipulation and fleeting kindness. You may begin to accept the situation, not because it’s okay, but because you feel too depleted to fight it. The abuse erodes your self-worth, and over time, it starts to feel like there’s no way out. You’re stuck in something that hurts, but escape feels impossible.

6. Loss of Sense of Self

Your identity starts to revolve around the abuser’s needs and approval. Their constant criticism, manipulation, and assault on your self-worth leave you feeling worthless, confused, or even crazy. Over time, you lose touch with your own desires, boundaries, and sense of self. You may find yourself second-guessing everything—struggling to make even the simplest decisions without their input.

7. Emotional Addiction

The bond becomes incredibly addictive. You start to crave the brief moments of affection and validation, even as they’re interspersed with pain, neglect, or cruelty. Like a gambler chasing the next win, you hold on, hoping for a return to the warmth that hooked you in the beginning. The fear of abandonment, loss, or being alone keeps you clinging—not because you want to stay, but because part of you feels like you can’t live without them.

Understanding the stages of trauma bonding helps expose the mechanics of that entanglement. It gives us a clear framework for recognizing what we’re experiencing, why we stay stuck, and how these patterns keep us trapped in cycles of pain and longing. When we begin to see the patterns clearly, their grip starts to loosen. That awareness often gives us the strength to reach out for the support we need—to break free, begin to rebuild, and open ourselves to the possibility of a relationship that actually is safe, healthy, and fulfilling.

Why It’s So Hard to Break Free

Trauma bonding can feel just as powerful—and just as hard to break—as an addiction. It’s not unlike the grip of opioids: even when the harm is clear, the craving for that next hit of connection or validation keeps pulling you back. The emotional intensity of these relationships runs so deep that you find yourself staying tied to someone who’s hurting you—even when part of you knows you need to walk away. No matter how much pain it causes, you keep going back, hoping for a shift that never comes.

That’s because trauma bonding is rooted in a survival response. Breaking free can feel like withdrawal from a drug. It activates terror, grief, guilt, and longing. Many remain stuck out of fear, low self-worth, shared responsibilities, or financial dependence. Others don’t even realize they’re in a trauma bond.

This isn’t about weakness or lack of willpower. It’s about your entire system—your nervous system, your biochemistry, and the deeper layers of your psyche—doing whatever it can to survive. You become locked into a desperate struggle to get your most basic needs met… to love and be loved. Instead, you’re being repeatedly hurt—retraumatized—and it feels overwhelming, even inescapable at times.

But perpetual reenactment isn’t healing. What may have served to protect you—or at least helped you survive at the time—can now keep you trapped in cycles of pain, confusion, and emotional dependency that prevent you from truly moving forward.

Signs You May Be in a Trauma Bond

The first step in breaking free from a trauma bond is recognizing that you’re in one. Here are some of the most common signs to watch for:

You feel intensely attached to someone who mistreats you. Even when they’re not around, the fear of losing them can feel overwhelming.

You find yourself denying, downplaying, or making excuses for their abusive behavior—even when the damage is obvious.

You feel trapped in the relationship but terrified to leave—or of being abandoned.

You keep longing for their approval or those rare moments of affection, even though they regularly hurt or tear you down.

You’ve become isolated from friends and family, and the abuser has become your main source of connection and support.

The relationship moves in cycles—cruelty followed by affection—keeping you stuck in a loop of hope and disappointment.

Your emotions are all over the place—you feel drawn to this person, even care about them, while also feeling hurt, anxious, or afraid. It’s a confusing mix of affection, fear, and loyalty that keeps you emotionally entangled.

You blame yourself for their behavior, believing that if you were better, they’d treat you differently.

It feels less like love and more like an addiction. You're strung out on this person—like a drug addict needing their fix—but no matter how much it hurts, you can’t seem to walk away.

How to Begin Breaking the Bond

Freeing yourself from a trauma bond begins with seeing clearly what you’ve been caught in. That clarity often comes through self-discovery and a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play. Once you begin to recognize the patterns and how they’ve shaped your attachment, you can start taking steps to break free—and that’s when the healing begins. Here are a few essential practices to help you navigate this painful but ultimately transformative process:

Educate yourself by reading articles and books and watching videos to learn about trauma bonding, manipulation, and the cycle of abuse.

Create space between yourself and the person you’ve formed an attachment to—especially if the dynamic has become abusive. Go low- or no-contact if possible. Physical and emotional distance brings clarity. It allows you to step back, interrupt the cycle of emotional dependence, and begin to reconnect with yourself. You don’t have to be fully ready to leave in order to create space. Sometimes, it’s the first step toward seeing things more clearly and reclaiming your sense of self.

If you're in a toxic or abusive relationship and you sense a potential threat to your wellbeing, don’t just walk away without a plan. Think it through. Make sure you’re safe. If the person is unpredictable or volatile, wait until they’re not around to begin making your exit. Reach out to people you trust, or use a crisis line if needed. Support makes all the difference—and you don’t have to do this alone.

Ground yourself in the here and now. Acknowledge what you’re feeling and recognize the behavior that’s harming your well-being. Use whatever practices or therapeutic interventions help you reconnect with your body, become more present, and support your healing. Getting grounded is what helps you break through the fog and see things for what they really are.

Find support, whether it's through an understanding friend or family member, or join support groups and talk with other people who have had similar experiences who understand these kinds of relational dynamics.

Re-pattern your inner models of relationship by surrounding yourself with people who are emotionally consistent, grounded, safe, kind, caring, and empathetic. Learn what secure love feels like in your body. True re-patterning happens through new experiences of connection and safety—especially with individuals who possess the capacity to love and be loved.

Visualize a new future by imagining your life without this individual you've been in an abusive relationship. What would it look and feel like?

Seek out trauma-informed therapy such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, EMDR and somatic work that helps to free trauma held within the body.

Be compassionate with yourself, and understand that healing is often a messy, nonlinear process. You are not to blame for the harm that was done to you. One of the things I’ve discovered is that by allowing yourself to be truly present — to face reality as it is and feel your authentic feelings — you naturally become more compassionate toward yourself.

The Path to Healing Starts with Awareness

Early experiences of abuse or dysfunction can shape us in ways we don’t even realize. Without meaning to, we often end up drawn to the same kind of emotional chaos we grew up with. We recreate the instability because on some level; it feels familiar—even when it hurts. And over time, that familiarity hardens into a trauma bond, keeping us stuck in the same painful relationship cycles.

Start paying attention to the patterns that keep playing out in your relationships. Which trauma response tends to take over—do you shut down, chase, freeze, or fawn? When did you first start reacting this way? And what does it feel like in your body when it happens?

Unprocessed Emotions and the Cycle of Reenactment

One of the biggest reasons people stay stuck in trauma bonds is because they haven’t fully processed their past relational trauma and the emotions attached to those experiences that continue to keep them entangled. For most of us, our parents were doing the best they could with the tools they had—but that doesn’t mean they weren’t wounded themselves. Many of us grew up in homes where there was verbal, emotional, physical, or even sexual abuse—or some combination thereof. That kind of upbringing makes us far more susceptible to trauma bonding.

Even those who had relatively loving and supportive parents can still fall into trauma bonds—especially with someone who has narcissistic traits. But for those of us who didn’t grow up with secure attachment, who never learned how to work constructively with our emotions, the risk is much higher. The unprocessed pain from childhood—often carried forward from our relationship with our parents—makes us more likely to repeat those same dynamics in adulthood.

We find ourselves entangled with someone who might be narcissistic, emotionally volatile, or even struggling with borderline tendencies—someone who criticizes, withdraws affection, lashes out, or creates chaos. These behaviors trigger deep emotional responses in us—fear of loss, sadness, shame, confusion, and hurt. And because we never learned how to be present with those emotions or how to process them, we fall into the same pattern: deny what’s happening, distract ourselves, numb out, pretend we’re fine. Meanwhile, all that pain stays trapped in the body. It never gets metabolized. The painful emotions, along with the imprint of past relational trauma, create a holding pattern that keeps us stuck—entangled in relationships that hurt us and unable to break free.

For the longest time, I was operating from a profoundly deep emotional deficit. I wanted so badly to love and be loved that I kept trying to hold on to women who were disinterested, emotionally unavailable, abusive—or crazymaking. I was so caught up in the hope that things could work that I didn’t want to see the truth of what these relationships actually were. I couldn’t let myself feel what was really going on inside me. And that disconnection from my own emotional reality only reinforced the trauma bonds that were causing me so much suffering.

It took time, but eventually I had to teach myself to come back to reality—to stop clinging to the fantasy, and face what was actually happening. I had to allow myself to fully feel what I was feeling: the sadness, the fear of abandonment, the pain of loss, the ache of knowing I would never get to share a real life with this person. It was excruciating at times. But allowing myself to feel the truth of it—that was the beginning of real healing.

The critically important lesson here is this: If you’re going to heal, you have to fully acknowledge the reality of what’s happening with this person—and allow yourself to feel what’s actually coming up in response to it. That means letting go of the fantasy or the potential you once saw, and coming face-to-face with the truth of the dynamic as it is right now. It’s not easy—but there’s no healing without this level of honesty.

Psychotherapy was an important part of my healing journey. It gave me a deeper intellectual understanding of my emotional wounding and helped me make sense of the relational dynamics I kept finding myself in. In addition, I also studied obsessively on my own—driven by a need to truly understand what was happening inside me. But as helpful as that insight was, it didn’t reach the deep layers where the real pain lived.

For many of us, trauma bonds run so extraordinarily deep that they become hard-wired into our physiology and psyche. We carry emotional wounds that go all the way back to childhood—and every painful relationship since has only exacerbated those wounds. I was in an immense amount of pain, and at the same time, longing for someone I could love and be loved by. That longing fueled my determination. I was willing to try anything—any practice or intervention that held real promise of helping me heal.

People often say there are many paths to healing—and while there may be some truth to that, what I’ve seen over the years tells a different story. I’ve encountered so many individuals still carrying the wounds of childhood trauma, replaying the same patterns of pain, and reenacting trauma bonds in their adult relationships. The scars—emotional, energetic, and sometimes even physical—aren’t always visible to others, but they’re unmistakable to me. And even though they may have progressed in some respects, I can still sense those aspects of the self that have not yet healed.

Of the many therapeutic modalities I've worked with, deep tissue bodywork has been enormously helpful. It brings more of the emotions that have been trapped in my body to the surface so I can actually process them.

During the sessions I’ve done with gifted healers, I could feel the trauma I’d internalized—along with all the painful emotions from childhood, adolescence, and the unhealthy attachments and relationships that caused so much suffering—rising to the surface. As that happened, I could feel the wounded parts of me beginning to heal and transform.

More than anything, it was the vision quest—a traditional Native American healing practice that involves fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water—that created the deepest shifts. At times, especially on the fourth night, I could feel an extraordinarily powerful presence descending into my body. As that happened, I would often find myself reliving past traumas. I could feel this presence helping me to digest those experiences, along with the painful emotions attached to them. As the wounded parts of me began to heal, I could sense an entirely new foundation taking shape—one that allowed me to attract healthier companions and co-create more meaningful, deeply fulfilling relationships.

Having trained extensively with a traditional Native American doctor (medicine man) from the Kiowa Tribe and gone through the vision quest many times over the years, I now work as a conduit—allowing an extraordinarily powerful presence to move through me to facilitate the healing of trauma bonds, other deep emotional wounds, and the imbalances that affect both body and mind. This work also helps increase your capacity to love and be loved, realize your true potential, and live in alignment with your deeper purpose.

I’m available for individual sessions. You can reach out to me directly at (332) 333-5155 to schedule a session or ask any questions you may have.

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