How to Heal the Trauma Bond That Ties You to Your Toxic Parent
A trauma bond can keep you addicted to unhealthy relationships
A trauma bond does not describe the situation of becoming enamoured by your captor. I know that people mistake a trauma bond with the Stockholm Syndrome but the two of them are different. Below we’ll talk about trauma bonds and if it’s possible to break them to move on and heal from a toxic parent or family member.
What is a trauma bond?
According to world-renowned narcissism expert and clinical psychologist, Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a trauma bond is an experience where a person has difficulty breaking free from an exploitative relationship (where one partner exploits the other).
This relationship alternates periods of good times with periods of bad or very bad times. Ramani believes that the reason people enter exploitative relationships is because they are following a ‘blueprint’ given to them by their parents.
Trauma bonds usually develop during the first years of life. As a child, our narcissistic parent has made us dependent on them emotionally by using ‘intermittent reinforcement’. This is a behaviour where the parent acts cruel and dismissive today and loving, warm and accommodating the next day.
This confuses the child which, later leads to staying in the relationship with the parent because the brain is made to believe that inconsistent behaviour is normal and they don’t deserve better.
All children are wired to be close to their caretakers. It is normal for them to want to be close with their family members because they have no one else around to bond with. The two hormones that make children chemically attached to their abusers are: oxytocin and dopamine.
- Oxytocin (the happy hormone)
Oxytocin is a hormone that is released when we start to become attached to our caretakers in the first few years of life. No matter how emotionally unstable our parents are, we feel good with them when we’re babies because they give us water, food, shelter and clothes.
Each time the adult shows up in your reality, the brain triggers the ‘happy hormone’, and so, you start associating good feelings with their physical presence. Connecting with the adults in our environment is crucial for our survival and so, we don’t criticise who we become attached to.
- Dopamine (the motivation/reward hormone)
We are bonded to our abusers through another hormone called ‘dopamine’. As children, when we were close to our toxic parents and they treated us badly, they motivated us to ‘do better’ and ‘act better’ thinking their behaviours were our fault.
Their nice, sometimes love-bombing-like acts motivated us to try harder to please them so we could get better treatment from them next time. (we thought that the nicer we were, the more consistently good their behaviour would get)
Now that we know that our trauma bond is not our fault and that we are hardwired to be close to our abusers, let’s see what the consequences of not breaking these bonds could be.
- You’ll maintain contact with the abusive parent and support the parent mentally, emotionally or/and financially. Supporting the parent financially can lead to financial or/and emotional ruin.
- You will enter relationships with extremely toxic individuals and even get married to them. You’ll be thinking that it’s normal to be with someone who disrespects you, breaks your boundaries and treats you less than what you deserve. An abusive marriage leaves deep scars on your brain, scars that will take a long time to heal, even with psychotherapy.
- You will struggle with various mental health issues: anxiety, depression, alcoholism, self-cutting, BPD, eating disorders, etc.
- You won’t develop your identity. You won’t know who you are and what you want from life. You will be spending your time trying to please the abusive parent, to the detriment of what you want/need.
Signs you are in a trauma bond with your toxic parent(s)
- You are defending them against the people who point out their flaws.
- You don’t see them as ‘abusive’, people with no empathy, love and care for you but as ‘flawed’ parents who did their best.
- You mistake toxic love for healthy love.
- You think that their behaviour is your fault (you are not accepting of them enough, you should be less critical, less harsh and maybe then, they’ll be nicer to you, etc)
- You are in contact with them and are not planning on cutting them out.
- You jump to fulfil their needs at any time of the day.
- You have no boundaries and you think you don’t even deserve to have boundaries.
- You take money from them (an allowance, an inheritance, money for rent, a downpayment for a house, clothes, gifts, etc).
- You think that deep down, they truly care about you. (they just don’t know how to show it)
- You agree with them about the criticism they have of you (‘I am stupid, they were right’ or ‘I can’t do anything right, my house is a mess’ or ‘I failed at work, they were right about me being a failure’, etc).
- You start ‘missing’ them when you’re travelling or moving away from them.
- When you are away, you think about the ‘good times’ you had with them. You think those good times can ‘erase’ a lifetime of abuse.
How to heal the trauma bond?
The following are some tips I’ve used myself and have worked to dissolve the trauma bond. However, if you find that my tips don’t work for you, read other articles and figure things out for yourself.
- Accept the fact that your parent is abusive and that they didn’t do their best.
Understand that being abusive is not doing the best for a child. Traumatizing the child with emotional threats, yelling, put-downs, criticism and manipulation is an assault on their psyche.
This impeeds their emotional growth and so, the child will grow up being emotionally stunted, dependent on the parent for food, shelter, communication, friendship, money and so on. I know people in their 50s who are still financially dependent on their narcissistic parents.
If you need help with internalizing the concept that your parent is abusive (and not flawed), write it down. Every day upon waking up write down ‘My mother is abusive’ or ‘I was abused as a child by my mom’ or ‘Dad is a jerk who destroyed my life.’
I used a journaling exercise to deal with this and I have hundreds of pages where I express my disappointment with how abusive my parents are. I never write a sentence about my mom without using the words ‘abusive’ or/and ‘narcissist’ in it.
Why? By writing down the word ‘abusive’, you send the message to the brain that the person who raised you is a perpetrator and not a flawed parent. Narcissists are perpetrators and, if you’re raised by one it is imperative to see them for who they are.
Taking your abusive parent off the pedestal is very important. If you refuse to see them as a perpetrator who is actually, out there to destroy you (and they will if you let them), you will not heal from this. Ever!
2. Recognize that all their behaviours are abusive even when it doesn’t feel like it.
This was the hardest thing for me to learn. To recognize covert abuse, label the behaviour as abuse and set boundaries. For example, when your parent is nice to you after yelling at you or putting you down, label that behaviour as ‘manipulation’. Manipulating an adult to trick them into giving you what they want is abusive. You should stay away from people like this.
3. Cut the ties.
I am not the kind of person who promotes low or minimal contact with a narcissist. I don’t care if advising people to go no contact with abusive parents is seen as harsh advice. I know how stressful minimal contact is so I’m talking from experience.
Moreover, being just a little bit in contact with narcissists allows a bit of their poison to seep into your life.
And if you think about it, drinking just a bit of poison is not OK. Would you drink just a bit of cyanide? Hell, if you did that, you’d be dead.
Cutting ties with your family will help you clear the toxicity and start your journey of recovery. You need a clean slate to allow your brain to stop being in a ‘fight or flight’ mode.
Life is much better when you’re not waiting for that phone call from mom coming to you with an imagined family emergency.
4. Learn to set boundaries.
Learning boundaries is a crucial skill to have. Without boundaries, you won’t know who you are, what you like, what you need from others and what are the things you’d benefit from to be happy. One good book about this subject is ‘Boundaries’ by Henry B. Cloud but there are others to check out as well. Read my previous blog post that talks about boundaries here.
5. Mingle with healthy people.
I’ve learned so much from healthy people. They are great role models for me. Whenever I mingle with people from healthy families, I get a boost in mood and self-esteem. Why? Their nice treatment of me tells my brain ‘I am good’ or ‘I am OK’ or ‘I am deserving.’
On the other hand, if you hang out with toxic parents, coworkers or friends and never with healthy, confident people, your brain will think that you don’t deserve more. That you need to tolerate these people because you can’t attract nicer folks in your life. That ‘you’re doomed to suffer’ in the same types of toxic relationships.
This is a lie and you’re perpetuating this lie by connecting with toxic individuals. If you were to cut ties with everyone who’s toxic, your mind would stop feeding you these unhealthy thoughts of being undeserving or bad.
Your environment is who you are so you need to choose people carefully.
5. Attend a support group or/and enrol in therapy.
I’m not going to advise you on attending a support group or enrolling in therapy. I’m going to say that you should do this. It is imperative to seek the help of a therapist or a support group that meets regularly so you can start sharing your abuse experiences.
Pete Walker, the author of ‘Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving’ says that verbal ventilation is crucial in recovery from an abusive relationship.
Talking about what happened to you will help you see the abuse for what it is: a truly terrifying experience. Moreover, the people who will listen to you will reflect to you how badly you’ve had it in your family. This can help break the trauma bond.
When healthy people tell you that your parents are toxic, horrible or unwell, you will feel like you’ve been fooled by your caretakers or lied to about who they were. And that will help with the healing process. This ‘realization’ will lead to many sleepless nights, panic attacks, anxiety and even depression. You will feel angry, too, like you want to get revenge on what has been done to you. This is grief.
Realizing what you went through as a child, crying about how little you had growing up and regretting the fact that no one protected you from your abusers is part of the process. Grieving is not easy but is important in becoming stronger and healthier as an individual.
I love what someone on the famous r/raisedbynarcissists forum said: you can cry about your narcissistic parent and separate from her now and be done with the trauma or you can keep her around and be in pain for the rest of your life. The choice is yours.
