Trauma Bonding: When The Ties That Bind Need to be Cut
A snapshot of what trauma bonding looks like for adult victims of childhood abuse.
Trauma bonding refers to the attachment bond that is created through repeated abusive or traumatic childhood experiences with the caregiver, whereby this relationship pattern becomes internalized as a learned pattern of behavior for attachment (Carbone, 2019).
I was lying on my couch around midnight last night, trying to finish an episode of Criminal Minds. I needed something to drown out the whispers lingering in my head, left there by a piece I had written earlier in the day. (Crying, for an hour, over the ending of Gone With The Wind hadn’t helped.)
I looked at my phone and realized I had a series of missed texts from my sister:
I’m losing it on her.
I look and feel out of control.
It’s the reasons I left all over again.
Clearly, the universe was not ready to let me off this emotionally charged roller coaster today. Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle, please…
I dialed my sister’s number and was greeted with the sadly familiar sound of her hysterically crying. We started this conversation the same way we have countless others:
