Part 3: Trauma Bonds & Echoes in Relationships

Trauma Bonds: When Pain Feels Like Home

Have you ever felt intensely connected to someone… even when they hurt you?
Like you knew deep down they weren’t good for you, but walking away felt like losing oxygen?

You might’ve been trauma bonded.

Trauma bonds are formed when your nervous system links love with harm. It’s not always obvious—because these relationships can look like passion, loyalty, or even soulmates. But underneath it all?
There’s often inconsistency, chaos, and unhealed trauma playing dress-up as chemistry.

Signs You Might Be in a Trauma Bond:

• You feel addicted to the emotional highs and lows.

• You constantly excuse bad behavior because you “understand their trauma.”

• You fear being alone more than you fear being mistreated.

• You try to earn love through overgiving, fixing, or pleasing.

• You’re repeating a familiar dynamic you experienced growing up.

The Science Behind the Pattern

Trauma bonds form through intermittent reinforcement—when love and abuse are unpredictably mixed. Your brain releases dopamine during the “highs,” and your nervous system becomes conditioned to seek those spikes of relief after the “lows.”

Think:
“I know they hurt me, but when it’s good, it’s so good…”
Yeah. That’s the trap.

As Judith Herman writes in Trauma and Recovery, trauma survivors often repeat harmful relationships not because they’re weak—but because they’re unconsciously trying to resolve unfinished pain.

Relationships Become Mirrors… or Minefields

Sometimes, we don’t recognize our own wounds until we try to love someone.
And when two unhealed people try to connect, the relationship can become a battlefield of projections and triggers.

You’re not just arguing about who left the dishes.
You’re arguing about feeling unseen, abandoned, controlled…
You’re arguing with ghosts.

Real Talk: Love Shouldn’t Hurt Like That

Love should be grounding. Safe.
Love should challenge you, yes—but never confuse you.
Never gut you.

So here’s the radical thing:
You’re allowed to walk away from what breaks you—no matter how deep the bond feels.

So What Can You Do?

1. Name the Pattern

If the relationship feels like a loop—pause and ask, What am I actually attached to?

2. Reparent Yourself

Your inner child might be clinging to this relationship because it reminds them of home.
Give them a new home—within you.

📝 Try this:
“Little me, I know you just wanted to be loved. I promise we won’t chase hurt anymore.”

3. Seek Safe Relationships

Start building new emotional blueprints.
Ones where you don’t have to earn safety—because it’s a given.

Affirmation:

I deserve a love that doesn’t confuse me. I deserve peace without punishment.

Journaling Prompt:

What does “home” feel like to you in relationships? Is that definition helping or hurting you?

📚 Further Reading:

• Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery.

• Carnes, P. (2012). The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships.

• Maté, G. (2022). The Myth of Normal.

• van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.

Up Next: When You Parent While Unhealed

Let’s talk about how unprocessed trauma can spill into parenting—and how to stop the cycle, gently.