How To Begin Healing Trauma Bonds

Hi, everyone. Dr. Nicole LePera, The Holistic Psychologist here. Anyone who follows my work knows I talk often about trauma bonds. What are trauma bonds? Trauma bonds are the patterns that most of us repeat time and time again in our relationships, all of them, friendships, colleagues, family relationships, romantic partners that we learned in childhood. We tend to show up in the same way, become the same caretaker that we were in childhood and repeat that same relationship model that most of us learned early on with the reality being it no longer serves us in adulthood. I say that to say most all of us, every one of us probably listening to this video is probably engaging in trauma bonding. So the question I get asked quite often is how do I begin to heal? So the first step to begin to heal trauma bonding is to journal about the cycles that you notice you participating in, in all of your relationships. Some of us listening to the video might know right off the bat, the cycles that we find ourselves, you know, listening, maybe I'm the caretaker. Oh, right. I'm always the caretaker in my relationships. The caveat here, the important point here is when we're journaling, when we're observing ourselves is to focus on ourself. A lot of us tend to focus on what that friend is doing or not doing consistently or what our partner's doing or not doing. This is really about us because again, remember we're the ones that are participating as well in that relationship. So exploring the cycles, understanding your own trauma bond patterning creates awareness. Likely you're engaging in that same patterning now in adulthood. With that awareness, we can create change. That first step is gaining that awareness and remember, focus on you. What is the patterning? What is the modeling? What do you do in these relationships across the board? Once you have some clarity on that, it would be really helpful to share that, share that with the close friend that you trust, the partner who's you're in a relationship with, that family member, right? I'm using these words very intentionally. We don't have to share what we come up with with anyone. Making sure that we're sharing it in a relationship that we feel safe to share it is really important. Sharing it is helpful. When I verbalize to my partner who has had a different experience than myself, she too now can gain awareness or understanding of the patterning that she's experiencing in our relationship. That works both ways. So it's sharing what you've come up with when you're exploring yourself, when you're gaining awareness of your trauma bond patterning, and then it's holding space to hear from that friend, that family member, that partner, you get it, about their awareness, about what happened to them and what patterns they repeat from childhood. That helps gain understanding between both participants. Brings us to number three. Really helpful step is to ask whoever the other person is, what makes them feel safe? A lot of us, when we're in that trauma bond patterning, it's really grounded in a lack of safety. We don't feel safe to express our core wants, our core needs, our authentic self to that first person. Maybe it was mom, dad, whomever in childhood, and we might not feel safe now. So not only is it important to become aware for ourselves, this applies both ways. I guess I should mention, become aware of what helps you feel safe. What do you need in the moment between you and another person to create that safety? And then again, being receptive to what the other person might need for safety as well. The two might not be the same. That's why it's important to ask, what makes me feel safe might not be what makes my partner feel safe. Safety is important. Number four, another step in creating safety. When we're activated, when that wounding from childhood is activated as it is in most of our trauma bonding, we become emotionally reactive. We go unconscious. I know in that unconscious state, personally, I have said, I have done things that I don't mean after the fact. It's really pouring out or exploding out right from that wound. Using belly breathing and space in that moment when we do feel like our emotions are out of control goes along. So belly breathing, the thing that I'm the biggest fan of because we take our breath with us, learning how to regulate our emotions when we do feel ourselves nearing that point of no return. And then like I said earlier, holding space for the other person as their emotions begin to ante up, possibly in a context where you wouldn't maybe even be having that same reaction, they might. And this is where we want to honor that space and that mutual regulation, which might mean both parties taking a step away to calm down and then to revisit the activating event, what happened essentially at a later time when we're both more calm. In the beginning, you might still say and do things you don't mean, and that's okay. Another video this month that I'm going to put out is going to be around shame. And the reality is this takes work, these steps. So in the beginning, you're probably still going to be saying and doing things you don't mean until we learn how to use these regulatory techniques, until we learn where that point is for me, where I have to say, no partner, I need a moment and I need to go regulate myself and then I can re-engage this conversation. So the biggest takeaway outside of these steps, of course, are as all things, this is a process. These trauma bond patterns are patterns we've been engaging in for most of us, as long as we've been in relationships with other humans. So this takes time and these are the steps that if we consistently engage in them, we can create change even in our closest, most trauma bonded, if you will, relationships.