It Is Normal To Trauma Bond
You may feel insane in your trauma-bonded reverie for someone who has wronged you, but know that there are individuals out there who are eating dirt and making more sense than some of the well-intentioned advice I received when dealing with various forms of loss.
Stop fixating, face your fear of moving on, focus on yourself, and time will heal all wounds, we're taught. When the indications of a traumatic reaction to a trauma connection make these things seem practically unattainable, they are.
Furthermore, when considered in the context of trauma bonding, protracted mourning over the loss of a relationship, even when that relationship was toxic, is far from unreasonable.
If you become increasingly stunned and immobile as time passes, this is your body's attempt to defend you from a perceived, ongoing threat.
You're not insane. The physiological status of your body is simply attempting to communicate with you in a way that you may not fully comprehend.
There are people all around the world who have a strong desire to dig in the dirt or play with clay. This is known as geophagy, and it sounds strange enough that many are embarrassed to acknowledge their urges. However, research has discovered that these cravings may signify a mineral deficiency in the body or serve as the body's defense response to infections in pregnant women or youngsters.
What appears to be unreasonable on the surface is actually rational. This isn't to say that those who are anemic should have a nice dirt snack with their coffee tomorrow afternoon. It does, however, imply that feeling alienated, humiliated, and disregarding the Real situation of the need without investigating what it means would never satisfy their organism's unfulfilled need.
What is trauma bonding, and how does it work?
When I stopped feeling humiliated and started trusting my body's own physiological signals, I finally understood trauma bonding.
It can be excruciating to break a trauma attachment. What good is it to try to accept the truth of a dysfunctional relationship, go no communication, and try to move on when you just feel worse as time passes?
When you break a trauma link, you may experience acute symptoms of withdrawal, memories, urges for the toxic person, obsessive thoughts about what occurred, and an uncomfortable condition that makes you feel like you're going backwards in time.
This may seem paradoxical at first, but these symptoms are proof that avoiding the toxic relationship is critical to your health. This is due to the fact that trauma is a physiological reaction to a perceived threat. When a person or event is dangerous, your biology recognizes it and reacts on a basic, gut, and instinctual level.
And even though you may be perfectly aware that you are no longer in the relationship, your body is still sensing a threat.
This manifests in symptoms that causes you to feel as if you're going insane — or as if you had been never supposed to be gone in the first place.
But none of this means that your body is attempting to tell you that you are eternally linked to the jerk who abused you, used you, and destroyed your heart. It means that the trauma you experienced prior to the relationship, during the relationship, and after the relationship ended is still there within you. It lives on as a recollection and echo that is unconcerned about time or place.
The indicators of trauma bonding are as follows:
- When you keep focusing on persons that have wronged you and are no more in your life.
- When you want to talk to someone who has wounded you and who you know will hurt you even more.
- When you continue to be around by people that you know are using or abusing you.
- When you're determined to stay faithful to someone that has wronged you despite their actions showing no sign of change.
- When you're eager to be acknowledged, affirmed, or required by people who have told you they don't care.
- When you go to tremendous lengths to aid, care for, or think about persons who have been detrimental in the past
These kinds of partnerships take advantage of old wounds and traumas.
There are a variety of reasons why we may be sensitive to trauma bonding in the first place, including a strong desire to heal a previous wound. We accomplish this by subconsciously reproducing the previous situation, right down to the most exploitative, hazardous, or embarrassing aspects of the previous trauma. In the previous instance, it came down to the type of toxic, emotionally distant, or developmentally stunted person.
What is Trauma
Trauma is a broad term that is still gaining traction in academia.
Viewing your seemingly unreasonable responses to sorrow via a trauma-informed perspective might help to alleviate some of the shame that comes with living in a body that is hyper-aroused and frenzied long after we've been told we should be over a relationship or scenario.
When you remove bias from the equation concerning the degree of cruelty that must exist in order to characterize trauma as trauma, you may begin to understand trauma. Other types of trauma include those involving the body's reaction to betrayal, childhood events, and interpersonal relationship trauma. A traumatic reaction is a highly personal experience. There are more potential trauma situations/sources than there are humans.
Trauma is a physiological state that exists within the body. It will be simpler to recognize the symptoms of this condition and to give it credence if you understand that trauma can develop without the presence of abusers, victims, or obviously dangerous settings. Anyone or anything that your body views as stressful can cause you to have a traumatic reaction.
Even when we are not in imminent danger — when we are out of the split, moved out, and presumably moved on — the shocked shock of anything that your body sees as a threat, including a betrayal or a failed relationship, can exist inside of us as a physiological condition. Even when we are not in danger, our bodies go into a survival mode, which manifests as a freeze state, which causes all of the unpleasant emotions you felt in the relationship to freeze within you as well.