7 Signs You're In A Trauma Bond (And How To BREAK The Toxic Cycles) 

My whole life I thought I didn't handle happiness well and or I would say I'm afraid of being happy and people always used to say it or should I say they always used to ask me why do you keep sabotaging yourself and the answer to all of those questions was always my father was behind all of it since he is a narcissist unable to be happy for me or jealous of my happiness He destroyed any of it he saw that's also why I instinctually hid things from my family including a wife of two years after she met my family we were divorced within a year.

The reason is the acceptance of energy from your parents which has caused trauma of some form, and their energy matches. That is the draw.

How to break the "trauma bond " Of Grandiose narcos with the devil 😈 ?

@@alecstuart5266 Yes trauma bonded after 3 year push/pull with a female covert Narc..

I feel the same way!

Could you explain .because I know my daughter is in one..why can't you leave?​@@beckywauer2291

My trauma bond is almost fully broken. He's trying to come back but his words don't have the same pull anymore. I think it's because I stayed until I couldn't stand to look at his face. Since your comment was 6 months ago, I'm praying you've moved on!

Actually; It breaks when you allow yourself to heal by doing the inner healing work. It does not break by finding another person. One has to become mentally and emotionally healthy first. Once your self-confidence and self-esteem is restored, then the Trauma Bond has no hold over you. This requires you to go 100% No Contact with the one you are trauma bonded with.

@@risingeagle6332 Been over a year now. Ive never been happier. And she is miserable from what I heard so that makes me happier 🤣

@@risingeagle6332 Agree. A ‘better’ person can help us understand and give us clarity, and certainly is a balm to our weary minds. But it’s not true healing in ourselves. Guaranteed if that ‘better’ person changed for some reason, or their true self emerged - say during crisis times - we would trauma bond to then and do all those 7 things all over again. Happened to me. Feeling happy the ex is miserable is a sign one hasn’t healed.

Nope.. trauma bond breaks when you heal your inner child on your own.. not through others. What you’re describing is the monkey bar phenomena, where you let go once you grab something else.. still not healthy.

How did your ex respond to you being with someone else? And did she try to get back with you?

Yeah, there are many narcissists, psychopaths and dark triad personality types in high power positions. I remember being taught about being assertive and remember narcissists bragging about their supposedly high "emotional intelligence"... 😂😂😂

Continuing on when they taught us at school to be assertive, one thing which comes to mind is that a grandiose narcissist takes the whole concept of "being assertive" to a pathological height: He/she asserts his/her own grandiose self image over everyone and everything around him/her.

@@psource2305 over competitive Society Norm

Yep, sadly this dysfunction is rewarded all the time in our society. And in families. Guess they feed into each other.

Same.😔

Well said! 👏🏼 A narcissistic person is always in a relationship with another narcissist. Codependency is covert narcissism which can be even sneakier and more dangerous than the overt one. So no one is really a victim!

Yes I started getting worried! I relate to some of the stuff she mentioned. I’m realizing we both narcissists and toxic

Read my comment above

We should have learned this in high school and they didn't teach us and that was wrong

Prayers🙏🏽

💜🙏💜🙏💜 I'm so sorry!

If I may without offence.. please suggest.. not being loyal to someone that is not doing the same for you. I hope you can possibly open up to the possibility of finding and letting in someone new. You are so beautiful and so worth it. What one man doesn't see in you another could adore. And remember take it slow and don't pressure yourself on anything. You deserve you and you deserve to be your favorite. ❤️

How are you doing? That’s a horror story

@princeofpersiagirl I'm almost 9 months post his brutal discard, I'm still not divorced because he's dragging it out even though he filed. I've stayed no contact with him. I only see him at court but I just want it done

omg you just put perfectly into words what has been happening to me... I always excused my partner because it wasn't malicious or intentional but all of the fighting and bad reactions and shutting me out and not dealing with conflict has been seriously messing with my mental and even physical health.

I was in a relationship with someone and they walked out suddenly. At the time it knocked me for 6 as there was little communication around problems from their end. I trusted we were on the same page and felt the same way about our relationship. We ended up coming back together but it was seriously tumultuous afterwards as trust was severed and I was paranoid that I’d missed something and it would happen again. Fast forward 18 months later - they walked out again. Although that time I could understand as it had been a tough old ride and I was particularly triggered from the 1st event. Now they want back in and I’m surprised that I still consider it after the way that I’ve suffered through this period. Trauma bonds are tough.

This is exactly how things panned out when I was in my previous relationship of 9 years.... a lot of people would say that that's plenty of time to know somebody, but the thing is, our relationship was primarily online (we only met in person 3 or 4 times). I fell in love with somebody who had baggage that felt very heavy and debilitating at times, and at the expense of my own well-being. Even if he was sensitive and empathetic at times, there were also times where he would avoid conflict or create bigger arguments because we couldn't come to an agreement on something important like values or finances. Walking away from all of that wasn't easy, but I knew that I had to put myself first for once and stop excusing his inconsistent behavior.

Exactly.

I know exactly how you feel. I have always been a good woman, hardworking, loving, and dedicated to my family. The weird thing is that my abusive husband never can see it. No matter how much I do he always says I’m not contributing anything and doing everything wrong. So over the past ten years I’ve been constantly trying to improve. At this point he’s molded me into this sort of superwoman trad wife who also has to support the family financially and it’s still not enough for him. I know I will never be able to make him happy yet I keep trying and I’m starting to feel like he is slowly crushing my spirit and soon there won’t be any left 😞

I’ve learned the issues that they have are mearly within themselves and has nothing to do with me. He’s a sick individual, that likes to bully ppl

If you're more specific your comment look strange

Change your location, habits, socialize elsewhere, gym, eat and sleep well

In the same boat here. I moved two states away but his phone calls don't stop. He can't physically hurt me anymore, but the I love you/I hate you emotional roller coaster and the calls so he can emotionally dump all the negativity of his day on my plate keep coming. I could be having a decent day, and if I make the mistake of answering a text or phone call I risk having my mental state sucked right down into that depressive state. I realize now that my need to people please should start with me treating MYSELF the way I treat other people. I think us people pleasers become that way because we have never experienced the focus of someone wanting to do that for US. Part of my own healing journey out of this is understanding my own self worth and ability to love ME have been lacking or just absent most of my life. I KNOW I am a good and loving person who deserves to have good and loving people in my life and for the first time in my life I am allowing myself to FEEL that. Positive affirmations get made fun of a lot, but we really need them to help bring us out of that darkness. Pleasers want to please because we know how deeply mistreatment cuts our hearts. It is ok for you to put your OWN heart first. To give YOURSELF the unconditional love it maybe feels no one else has given you. My own self esteem has been shite, part from childhood part from this narcissistically abusive ex, but I know a lot of that was his own projection from his own cruddy self esteem. Now, I am going to let him keep that crap. Slowly it is becoming easier to ignore texts and calls because I am more and more able to focus on investing in the little things in life that bring my heart joy. Nothing that does that is silly when it comes to healing! One example is that I bought a bunch of prism crystals and hung them in my bedroom window. Now, every morning the sun shines I get to wake up to an explosion of tiny rainbows all over the walls of my room! It's amazing and magic and HAPPY and it belongs to ME. I am sorry I rambled here, and I hope you can find something useful here. More so, I hope you can move on from this toxic person into a place your heart finds peace. I wish you well.

@@ThatMontanaMom to be blunt... You prolong breaking the trauma bond and healing by allowing the contact. Block!

@@ThatMontanaMom thank you for your message. Feeling incredibly down right now. I tried listening to affirmations to lift myself up before and she would always make fun of me. She’s very negative about everything and I felt stupidly hopeful. Like I had to be positive for the two of us every day. You’re right about wishing to feel unconditional love the way I give to people. Sometimes I feel is selfish to want that and other times after listening to affirmations I feel like she is lucky to have me but I don’t think I can change her and how she doesn’t respect me or appreciate me. She keeps going with her life as if nothing happens, probably even happier now that she doesn’t have to worry about my feelings getting hurt when she hides me from her friends cause she’s afraid they’ll give her a hard time cause we got back together, as if I did something wrong to her. I think the pain right now is mostly from feeling like I wasted so much time and feeling so stupid for loving someone like that so much. I hope I can learn and let go of her completely and just heal.

@@sal2705 Oh man, do I get that! I have really struggled with anger at MYSELF for staying in such a messed up, toxic cesspool of a relationship! Now, by nature I am kind of a dry humor, kinda cynical person, mostly about the human race in general. But I will still make eye contact and smile at strangers because I understand people just sometimes need that. Sharing kindness and helpfulness are aspects of my personality I like. Where I get in trouble in intimate relationships is believing if I put in 110% effort, that by some miracle the other person will do that too! Yet I seem to have developed the skill of attracting narcissists who are only too willing to take and take with minimal give back! You know, in the aftermath of this sh*tstorm I came to realize that not only were my own personal boundaries weak, I never really had a clear definition of what I wanted them to be to begin with! I know that I can only change my own self. I can't change him. I can't trust him and I would be a fool to think I could. The one consistency he showed me was that he could never be honest, or faithful and his dependability swung with his moods. He was also an Iraq war veteran and had been in close proximity to explosions that left him with TBI as well as PTSD. There are some changes that he may not be able to make on an actual physiological level because of it. I carry bite scars from this man on several places on my body yet I STILL have a sense of....I honestly don't know if it is pity or real compassion. Yet another part of me wishes a Mack truck had his number. Living with this split feeling daily, then seeing these words written...all I can think is, "How messed up AM I?" It makes me question my entire EXISTENCE! Yet...I have to give myself a little grace for being a perfectly flawed human subject to making massive mistakes, sometimes more than once, but the only time I will ever really fail is if I give up trying to heal. Trying to rise above and do and be better. I think we stay in these awful places because we fear the unknown. That saying, better the devil you know comes to mind. You seen like a good and kind hearted person, and I know your self worth jas taken a serious hit with the feelings of betrayal and rejection. But you deserve to be with a person who is HAPPY to bring you in to their friend group. I mean, do you REALLY want to associate with people who are all about the appearance of happy, successful relationships, or would you rather associate with people who seek genuine depth and connection? People who aren't afraid to be who they are and not some idea of what they THINK people want to see? Cuz man, all that shallow fake garbage seems like an awful lot of work to me. And as for her possibly being happier without you...from what I have learned, people who are constantly negative about everything, are really NOT happy people. I mean, maybe they can play the part for a time, but pretty soon all that internal negativity starts seeping out of them like ink on water just tainting whatever it touches. It is OK for you to give yourself permission to move on (I wish I was as good at taking my own advice here as giving it...🙄😆). There is still a lot of beauty in the world, when we can get our eyes off our own despair and look around. One step at a time. You matter, ya know. The world needs people with good hearts. Probably now more than ever! We are complete strangers, but I believe in you!

This!

@@Chrissy856 im 2 months in no contact. So much happier

@@greberc7284 Keep at it, girl. Sending you my best wishes.

@@Julesyoutoo thank you.

That sounds tough. Maybe do a RU-vid search with terms like 'narcissistic daughter/son' and see what comes up. Les Carter has very good overall advice for this topic.

Let your child individuate. Show respect

Don’t look for closure. Detach. Protect yourself and don’t let her have that much power over you. My 2 cents. Good luck!

There are different types of narcissists, for example, the 'malignant narcissist' or the 'vulnerable narcissist'. Dr Ramani explains a lot about the types if you're interested.

And I've listened to all of Ramani.And most of sam vaknin

It can happen in any type of relationship where there’s abuse present. And addictions can drive people to act in highly narcissistic ways 🙏❤️

@@CommonEgo thank you so much. I have been watching your trauma bond playlist on my walks over and over and it fits my ex fiance to a T. You don’t know how much this has helped me. I really appreciate it.

There is no pain free way of breaking free it has to be no contact and setting firm boundaries and block all social media only then can recovery begin