Trauma bonding is a normal stress response.
Our instinctive human bonding is
another normal human function
sociopaths hijack for their own use.
Lets take back our lives.
Bonding is part of humanity. It’s human at its essence. In times of stress or crisis bonding happens naturally. We see it within families, we see it within countries and groups. Bonding while in trauma is a built-in mechanism to bring us connection with those we love for new-found resilience and strength to handle the crisis.
This marvelous lifesaving mechanism to bond more deeply in times of attack, danger, or trouble occurs even when the one we love is the source of the crisis.
Traumatic bonding isn’t a weakness in our soul. It’s innate, normal and something we can’t not do as healthy human beings. And when we’re ensnared by one of these creatures, we’re under a sticky hypnotic kinda spell holding us in like quicksand. Hanging in is normal.
In the chaos of life with a sociopath, we bond with them because we feel we love them and are in a relationship with them. This is natural.
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Understand Trauma Bonding for Deeper Healing
The bottom of our world drops. The love of your life is a beast from hell. Your stomach lurches, your heart pounds, you choke on your own breath. Adrenaline floods your brain.
The discovery that we were a criminal fraudster’s mark knocks our world out of place, the floor under our feet drops away. The dawning revelation that there is no love and that in fact, we’re in danger with this person and because of this person is like an awakening from a nightmare to find it’s alive and real.
It brings vertigo and laser clarity in equal measure. In one moment we go from the struggle of trying to align an out-of-sync relationship to the blinding truth that there wasn’t one. Nothing is what we thought it was.
The Spell Breaks
In this one crazy single moment for me, I also realized I’d been living at least two worlds all along and that moment the spell broke those two worlds each became more sharply delineated, and yet full still of mud at the same time. The best part was, I’d snapped the ropes that bound me to him. There was much more unwinding to do, but nothing would take away this new insight into this mess.
There’s nothing wrong with us. We are not broken…and believe me, I know you might feel broken. I did. What we are is richly, fully, amazingly human. This is our saving grace. how you’re feeling is not the new you. It isn’t permanent.
When We See Behind the Mask to the Monster
Yes, before the mask completely falls we know things aren’t great – but not in our wildest imagination can we or anyone else yet comprehend the reality we face a seeming meastro of deceit and destruction wearing the skin and clothing of a person we thought was the love of our life.
Terror floods our veins. Danger stands before us wearing the same shoes that troubled-love stood there wearing only a split second ago. Our heart races. Our mind spins.
We fall into a chasm of terror or lift ourselves to a new life. The stress of seeing the sociopath behind the mask, the narcissist without his fake persona is profound stress.
Trauma Stress and Regular Old Stress Makin’ Folks Sick
We’ve all heard – and have experienced – that stress makes us sick, as in ill from annoying colds to heart attacks. Stress has been something to avoid.
During even one year of lots of stress, a leading health psychologist, Dr. Kelly McGonigal tells us, studies show that stress gives a 43% increased risk of edging us toward our demise – but – that’s old news! Now they know – drum roll: This is the result only if we believe stress is harmful. – Remember, they used to believe the earth was flat?
What if we can make stress help us? There’s a new take on stress. Stress is now known as the “biology of courage.” Trauma bonding and the trauma of life or living with a sociopath is our path to amazingness. It’s one of the cool things about being human.
The rush of blood and adrenaline, the rapid heart rate – the other chemicals made by our bodies under stress – will, rather than defeat us, save our lives.
Stress and Trauma Cause Us to Bond
Stress gives us access to our hearts. The stress of trauma gives us the instinct to reach out to others who love us and — to support those in stress. This connecting factor saves us and brings health and longevity.
Stress – even stress from a monster attack – is our friend. It isn’t the enemy as we’ve been taught; stress isn’t the road to the common cold, but the pathway to more compassion for ourselves and anyone in need of support.
Our pounding heart is preparing us for action, pumping energy into our bloodstream. The increased breathing is getting oxygen to our brains for precise body function.
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Restore Our Lives
When we think of the stress response as on our side rather than something that makes us sick we relax into it and biochemically within our body, the reaction is “like that in moments of joy and courage”.
Courage and connection are found in the alchemy of this life and post-traumatic stress in the aftermath of a sociopath. – A stronger, bigger better heart.
There is a simple hypothesis about what steers the human brain to trust another human: a hormone called oxytocin….our behavior is also influenced by a large number of very complex, yet identifiable, biological processes. Future research should help us understand how cognitive and biological processes interact in shaping our decisions about whom to trust.
~ Brain Trust, by Michael Kosfeld
Stress Leads Us to Others: It’s a Good Thing
Stress makes us social – the chemical reaction in the body from stress makes us reach out to those we love and simultaneously causes us to fight for those we love. That famous hormone: Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone created in the pituitary gland shooting magic sauce through the body when under stress that has a special, purposeful function.
As Dr. McGonigal says, it “fine-tunes our social instincts.” This chemical rush primes us to do things that strengthen close relationships. Stress makes us more willing to help and support people we care about.
Pathological Users Hijack Every Natural Part of Normal Humans
There’s a built-in mechanism within our bodies; a natural response to handling stress that leads us to make a deeper connection. Yes, a deeper bond with the person we’re going through the trauma with. When we’re in this mess entangled by a sociopath and the anxiety and chaos mount, we bond with them. That’s normal.
The thing is, we don’t yet know they’re abnormal. This bonding is called trauma bonding, and then, in this case, our normal human bonding mechanism is seen by “experts” as a weakness or a fault. – Our normal bonding in chaos and trauma is yet another human function the sociopath turns to their advantage.
Initially, the chaos the sociopath whips up in our relationship bonds us to them because of the flood of oxytocin we didn’t even know our body was shooting out.
Continuous Trauma
The more havoc and imbalance the sociopath makes, the more our body’s involuntary protective stress reaction makes us reach out to them because at least at that moment, we still love them.
Because that’s how humans function biologically, and so we believe them. And so we fight for them, and for us as a couple. – Until we don’t. Until they do something so horrific our body recognizes them for what they are: the enemy from hades. Then things really heat up.
When we see through the sociopath use that fight-or-flight rush of oxytocin for us. Run to the real true love of family and long-time friends. Embrace our own lives. Stress can create resilience and joy.
Trust yourself; we can handle the challenge of the stress in the aftermath of a sociopath – the ability to do this is built into our body – and even our body knows we don’t have to face it alone. Connect with others who don’t judge, and can listen in the aftermath of a sociopath to anchor ourselves to human goodness.
Dr. Kelly McGonigal on Stress as Fuel for Renewal
There’s more.
Introducing, Dr. Kelly McGonigal, TED Talk.
Listen to the doctor, she explains it much better than I do.
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Time to Thrive!
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