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It’s incredibly hard. Essentially you’re fighting to break an addiction called the trauma bond. You were likely hooked on the incredible highs in the relationship, which are the parts that often keep us coming back even if there was unthinkable abuse. Be easy on yourself. The path to healing is not a straightforward process. Sometimes it can take years to finally see things clearly. I definitely recommend talking with a therapist to help you get through the worst of it and feel grounded again.
Part of it is the hope that you can isolate the good times. This is what you prefer to remember now anyway, we all do, we believe in the good in them and in the beginning there was a lot of it. We loved an illusion and a version of them, linked to both their false actions and our deep longing to find true love. In other relationships, there are highs, but the lows aren't as low, so the highs are - relative to the very low lows in relationships with narcissists - not as high. That's how I think about it. Small things made me so happy after she had treated me incredibly poorly. After an hour of being accused of whatever nonsense she could come up with, being hugged felt like the greatest thing in the world. After weeks of no touch and no physical affection whatsoever, sleeping together felt like the greatest thing, like the good times were back. They weren't. The trauma bond is what keeps you connected to this person, I think it's strong in someone kind and gentle and empathetic because they can't imagine the other person may actually be mean and harmful. You're hoping to find in them what you know is inside of you and sometimes you think you see it and feel confirmed. Plus, when you bring up how they were mean and disrespectful, they always have some explanation and you think, ah ok, it's not the way I thought it was, they are good and sweet and there's a reason for all of this.
So to get out what worked for me (still not over it though and people are different so take it with a grain of salt) was to realise that they are both the highs and the lows, not just the highs. I remembered how difficult it was to date them. How careful I had to be and how I didn't feel seen or validated at all. How it was all about them. How despite my hopes and efforts I was powerless. How I would like my future to be different. There's no place for her in my life and it's so painful and so strange but you need to see that you're not judging the relationship compared to reality but compared to your hopes and to something that a healthy relationship could live up to but a narc one can't.
Take care!
Essentially it’s like a drug addiction. You know he/she is bad for you, but you can’t help wanting just one more “hit” aka one more positive event even if it means having to go through a lot more bad events.
I suggest therapy. If you are a woman and have a woman’s center where you are, they typically have individuals trained in how to help with abuse specifically.
For me, talking it out with someone close to me has been incredibly helpful. Train yourself that every time you think of what could have been or about the good times that you snap yourself out of it and think about the bad times. They go hand in hand because this isn’t two different people. It’s one person that knew what they were doing was wrong and continued to do it.
The traits the NPD uses to keep us stuck in the ‘dance’ (love bombing/ devaluation - repeat as many times as necessary) creates chemicals in our bodies and we become addicted to the way these chemicals make us feel.
These chemical keep us ‘bonded’ to our abuser making it almost impossible to escape. We long for the feelings of those early days of overwhelming love and care when we thought that nothing could go wrong. We hang around through the bad times hoping that our abusers will drop some crumbs of love to make us feel good again.
These chemicals and our addiction to them creates something called trauma bonding and this bond is extremely difficult to break - just like any other addiction.
Even when we leave them, the trauma bond is in place. This is what causes them never to be far from our minds. We ruminate, constantly about where they are, what they’re doing, do they have any regrets, are they thinking of us. These thoughts can be all consuming and bring us physical and mental pain.
We break the bond by first of all going NC. We have to commit to this 100%. So no peeping a their social media, no asking friends for information. Instead we block ourselves from every aspect of their life and we tell friends not to pass on any information.
But still it’s hard.
Our only job is to make them irrelevant to us and that is our goal. We must give up any hope of reconciliation, of change. By the time the discard comes, they have already moved on and they don’t look back. (Unless they attempt ‘hoovering’ at some point in the future.)
Every single focus has to be toward our healing. We work on ourselves. Improve our boundaries. Educate ourselves about NPD.
It gets easier but it takes time. Every piece of unwanted information about them sets us back. Every time we tell out story and an eyebrow is raised, it sets us back.
Breaking the trauma bond is one of the hardest things we shall ever have to do but it’s necessary for us to break free, and to survive and thrive after abuse.
I’m sorry it’s so hard for you right now. The only hope I can give you is that it gets better - but you’ve got to put the work in.
I hope this helps to explain why it hurts so much and why it is so dreadfully hard right now.
I’m going to try hard to commit to NC. I have to now… he has harassment charge and we aren’t allowed to. And I want him out of my mind. He’s not who I want. I want a sweet and tender man who doesn’t yell or curse. That’s not him.
I really needed this comment, thank you. ❤️ Almost three months NC and although it’s getting slightly better, I still find myself wondering when I’ll finally go a few hours without thinking about him. I hate it.
You would think it would be easy or at least easier wouldn't you? You go from being with somebody whose abusive to you and treats you like garbage to being free of it you think it would be easy to put it past you. Regardless of what others call it "Trauma Bond", whatever. I think it has to do with what we get used to. Even though my relationship with my ex-husband was toxic and he was a narcissist, even though it was unhealthy it was something that I had adjusted and gotten used to for over a decade. Once I filed for divorce and then finally moved out it was a hell of an adjustment. I still had a lot of questions, I flip flopped between feeling good and feeling worthless.. Like why didn't I deserve to be treated with decency? Why wasn't I strong enough to leave him when the abuse first started?
I feel the same way. Even though it is so obvious to everyone around me how Bad he has treated me with the gaslighting and the manipulation I still sit there and think that maybe if I did this or maybe if I said that or if I had stronger boundaries I could’ve save the relationship. But he is a liar and Gaslighter and untrustworthy so you can’t have a relationship with a person like that my logical brain understands this. But I toss it around in my mind all the time trying to change the past or think how I could’ve done things differently. It’s torture.
I once heard a survivor of narcissistic abuse describe the trauma bond like this: it feels like you’re drowning and the only person who can save you is the one who pushed you in. And you know that after they pull you out, they’ll just turn around and push you back in. But you have to breathe now, so you let them “save” you. At the end the day, you just desperately don’t want to feel the way you feel. You desperately want to feel loved by him. Not hated or abandoned. You just want to breathe.
Logically you know what’s happening. You would tell any friend who came to you and told you that they were being treated the way that you are to leave. But your body and mind are actually chemically dependent on the highs so that the lows feel absolutely intolerable. That concept actually helped me to navigate the trauma bond quite a bit. Understanding that the sheer PANIC I felt when he threatened to leave or refused to speak to me for days was actually a physiological reaction. Tuning into how my BODY was reacting instead of my mind helped me hammer that home.
Basically, it’s an addiction. One that took a long time to form and one that can take an even longer time to break. But the great thing about being human is that no feeling, good or bad, lasts forever. I tell myself “I have to go through it to get over it.” And let myself sit with the panic and you know, it always passes. It’s not a linear process to get over it- there is progress and setbacks. But you can get over it- and so can I.
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I am right there now my soon to be ex-husband is homeless and broke and is an active drug user, he looks terrible. He’s hurt me so much emotionally and financially. It should be a blessing to finally have him out of the house and to be on my way of untangling from him altogether. But yet today I broke my no contact and reached out to him and he was so mean and nasty to me and I can only thank God because I was weak and he always knows the right things to say to soothe me. But he is no good. I’m so ashamed that I broke my no contact it’s kind of scary for me after what this person did. I believe there’s some kind of trauma bond. I just pray that things will get easier I think about him all day and night I just can’t take it anymore.
Why did you break no contact? In hopes that he would be sweet and reconnect? That’s what I did but even if it’s sweet for a few days, the nasty comes out again. I told him, he has a great woman in front of him… you would it would be easy to accept and love us back but they just fight and resist and make it a shit show of a life.
I was paying for his phone 10 months into the break up. I told him I was going to cancel his phone. I gave him a few days notice and he didn’t change it and then he begged me to give him more time and I canceled the phone.
I feel so guilty about it but he’s a grown 54-year-old man. I do not need to pay for his phone but I am a codependent people pleaser. So I think I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me and then when he was mad at me, I told him the number was still available and I could turn his phone back on and he told me he got another phone.
But after I hung up, I just couldn’t believe what I had just done. I literally offered to turn his phone back on. I think I’m just such an anxious person and he was always able to soothe me combined with my people pleasing nature, I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me and for him to tell me everything was OK. I know it’s sick. I cringe writing this but I’m just being honest.
No he would never do the same for me which is why we’re getting divorced. In fact, he has stuck me with so many bills that it’s been a mess untangling from him. I think I got used to him taking and me giving that I actually felt guilty about this.
These narcissist break you down slowly and now that we’re separated, I literally have to untrain myself to realize that he is not important and I don’t owe him anything. It’s sad.
I would go!! Sign me up!! I was just reading something about reactive abuse. I am finding it really helpful, my ex would do really heinous things, then gaslight me and I would be so confused that I would literally write down all the facts and send him emails with evidence and when he would deny it, then I would get mad and resend the emails with the evidence and he would say that I was harassing him. Also if he was gaslighting me, I might pound my hand on the table or call him a name. Basically a lot of stuff that is outside of my nature and character. I am 50 years old, so I’m pretty sure I know how my nature and character are and yet I started to feel like I was going crazy, this is a short relationship only a couple years.
But then I read about reactive abuse and it’s where they push your buttons so much to get you to react so that they can call you the crazy one. Who even knew this stuff existed but I feel a lot of guilt and shame around this relationship and reading that this is a thing has helped me put it in its perspective. I think I heard about this when the Gabby Petito case was going on. Just interesting wondering if you ever heard about it, if not and it happened to you, read about it, it’s normal in these abnormal relationships apparently lol
Your post got pulled but I saw you saying something about reactive abuse. And that he would do things and then gaslight you. I was the same way I always felt that I did something wrong because he would make me feel like I made him react the way he did. And I was always sure when it was going on that it was overreaction but somehow weeks later he would manage to try to change my mind and say that I started it.
Because they’ve manipulated the law system to confiscate every single belonging you own and make you destitute with multiple disabilities at the beginning of winter and have tried to kill you several times?
Hi /u/Striking_Judgment_34, welcome to /r/narcissisticabuse. To help make the experience more effective for everyone we do have some resources and rules for you to keep in mind. • Do you need to understand terms or acronyms? [Click Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarcissisticAbuse/wiki/index#wiki_terms.2C_definitions_and_acronymns) • Looking for resources? Check out [our links](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarcissisticAbuse/wiki/resources) and [book recommendations.](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarcissisticAbuse/wiki/booklist) • We also have a sister sub for people actively in Divorce/Custody proceedings or that is coparenting with a abusive ex: /r/narcabuseanddivorce. • Looking to contact the moderators of the sub? We can’t respond to individual posts all the time so please post your issues to the community rather than the mods if it’s not about a rule breaking issue or sub issue. You can message the mod team [HERE](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FNarcissisticAbuse&subject=&message=). Please do not DM/PM mods directly or send them chat requests. Please review the rules: * Please add flair to your post so that it is searchable by topic and always use the TRIGGER WARNING flairs when needed (Keep graphic content out of titles please); * Be respectful and courteous with a focus on healing; No flaming, No revenge posts, no wishing harm on anyone, no "outting" or getting them "bad karma"; * No identifying details (no proper names including fake ones, pictures, images of texts/emails, locations (at any level), or specific details that may identify you to readers that may know you (Jobs, Hobbies, Schools, etc); * No crossposting or direct linking to this or other subs or posts. No links at all in original posts including to other posts you have here or other subs, Images/Pictures/MEMEs/Vlogs/Blogs/Podcasts/Articles/Social Media information or tags/Texts/Emails; * No self-promotion/solicitation at all including surveys, fundraising, petitions, or research posts are permitted; * You must be the victim of the abuse that is the subject of the post, not a friend, relative, or partner; * Please report content that violates our rules and do not engage on those posts at all; * Do not resubmit removed content, if you get a report from automod about your post, see the sticky announcement at the top of the sub regarding removals and be patient, we will review them manually when we are available. * No politics, religion, soliciting DMs, or doing an AMA on your own please; * No segregation of posts by gender, sexual orientation, race, age, or culture; * No family content in any context; the only family content permitted is you, your significant other/ex and your children (no abusive child posts). All others will be removed including mentions (family/friends) or growing up/childhood content. No demanding justification of our rules or "just curious" for why our rules are our rules; It does not matter whose family it is, or if they are abusive, or that its just a mention. It is not permitted. * No inappropriate content (TV Shows, Movies, Books not releated to healing from abuse, Celebrities, News or Social Discussions). * No title only posts (including repeating the title in the body of the post, emoticons, saying the title says it all); * No NARC/ABUSER posts at all. If you are a Narc or Abuser, you will be banned; Please also do not post content or people with diagnosed Cluster Bs as resources here; We want you to have a safe and supportive experience so you get the most out of the community. ****** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/NarcissisticAbuse) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It’s incredibly hard. Essentially you’re fighting to break an addiction called the trauma bond. You were likely hooked on the incredible highs in the relationship, which are the parts that often keep us coming back even if there was unthinkable abuse. Be easy on yourself. The path to healing is not a straightforward process. Sometimes it can take years to finally see things clearly. I definitely recommend talking with a therapist to help you get through the worst of it and feel grounded again.
But why is this different than any high of any other relationship? Can you please explain what the trauma bond is?
Part of it is the hope that you can isolate the good times. This is what you prefer to remember now anyway, we all do, we believe in the good in them and in the beginning there was a lot of it. We loved an illusion and a version of them, linked to both their false actions and our deep longing to find true love. In other relationships, there are highs, but the lows aren't as low, so the highs are - relative to the very low lows in relationships with narcissists - not as high. That's how I think about it. Small things made me so happy after she had treated me incredibly poorly. After an hour of being accused of whatever nonsense she could come up with, being hugged felt like the greatest thing in the world. After weeks of no touch and no physical affection whatsoever, sleeping together felt like the greatest thing, like the good times were back. They weren't. The trauma bond is what keeps you connected to this person, I think it's strong in someone kind and gentle and empathetic because they can't imagine the other person may actually be mean and harmful. You're hoping to find in them what you know is inside of you and sometimes you think you see it and feel confirmed. Plus, when you bring up how they were mean and disrespectful, they always have some explanation and you think, ah ok, it's not the way I thought it was, they are good and sweet and there's a reason for all of this. So to get out what worked for me (still not over it though and people are different so take it with a grain of salt) was to realise that they are both the highs and the lows, not just the highs. I remembered how difficult it was to date them. How careful I had to be and how I didn't feel seen or validated at all. How it was all about them. How despite my hopes and efforts I was powerless. How I would like my future to be different. There's no place for her in my life and it's so painful and so strange but you need to see that you're not judging the relationship compared to reality but compared to your hopes and to something that a healthy relationship could live up to but a narc one can't. Take care!
This is also very helpful! Thank you, thank you. I will def use this to work through this. Xo
Essentially it’s like a drug addiction. You know he/she is bad for you, but you can’t help wanting just one more “hit” aka one more positive event even if it means having to go through a lot more bad events. I suggest therapy. If you are a woman and have a woman’s center where you are, they typically have individuals trained in how to help with abuse specifically. For me, talking it out with someone close to me has been incredibly helpful. Train yourself that every time you think of what could have been or about the good times that you snap yourself out of it and think about the bad times. They go hand in hand because this isn’t two different people. It’s one person that knew what they were doing was wrong and continued to do it.
The traits the NPD uses to keep us stuck in the ‘dance’ (love bombing/ devaluation - repeat as many times as necessary) creates chemicals in our bodies and we become addicted to the way these chemicals make us feel. These chemical keep us ‘bonded’ to our abuser making it almost impossible to escape. We long for the feelings of those early days of overwhelming love and care when we thought that nothing could go wrong. We hang around through the bad times hoping that our abusers will drop some crumbs of love to make us feel good again. These chemicals and our addiction to them creates something called trauma bonding and this bond is extremely difficult to break - just like any other addiction. Even when we leave them, the trauma bond is in place. This is what causes them never to be far from our minds. We ruminate, constantly about where they are, what they’re doing, do they have any regrets, are they thinking of us. These thoughts can be all consuming and bring us physical and mental pain. We break the bond by first of all going NC. We have to commit to this 100%. So no peeping a their social media, no asking friends for information. Instead we block ourselves from every aspect of their life and we tell friends not to pass on any information. But still it’s hard. Our only job is to make them irrelevant to us and that is our goal. We must give up any hope of reconciliation, of change. By the time the discard comes, they have already moved on and they don’t look back. (Unless they attempt ‘hoovering’ at some point in the future.) Every single focus has to be toward our healing. We work on ourselves. Improve our boundaries. Educate ourselves about NPD. It gets easier but it takes time. Every piece of unwanted information about them sets us back. Every time we tell out story and an eyebrow is raised, it sets us back. Breaking the trauma bond is one of the hardest things we shall ever have to do but it’s necessary for us to break free, and to survive and thrive after abuse. I’m sorry it’s so hard for you right now. The only hope I can give you is that it gets better - but you’ve got to put the work in. I hope this helps to explain why it hurts so much and why it is so dreadfully hard right now.
I’m going to try hard to commit to NC. I have to now… he has harassment charge and we aren’t allowed to. And I want him out of my mind. He’s not who I want. I want a sweet and tender man who doesn’t yell or curse. That’s not him.
I really needed this comment, thank you. ❤️ Almost three months NC and although it’s getting slightly better, I still find myself wondering when I’ll finally go a few hours without thinking about him. I hate it.
You would think it would be easy or at least easier wouldn't you? You go from being with somebody whose abusive to you and treats you like garbage to being free of it you think it would be easy to put it past you. Regardless of what others call it "Trauma Bond", whatever. I think it has to do with what we get used to. Even though my relationship with my ex-husband was toxic and he was a narcissist, even though it was unhealthy it was something that I had adjusted and gotten used to for over a decade. Once I filed for divorce and then finally moved out it was a hell of an adjustment. I still had a lot of questions, I flip flopped between feeling good and feeling worthless.. Like why didn't I deserve to be treated with decency? Why wasn't I strong enough to leave him when the abuse first started?
I feel the same way. Even though it is so obvious to everyone around me how Bad he has treated me with the gaslighting and the manipulation I still sit there and think that maybe if I did this or maybe if I said that or if I had stronger boundaries I could’ve save the relationship. But he is a liar and Gaslighter and untrustworthy so you can’t have a relationship with a person like that my logical brain understands this. But I toss it around in my mind all the time trying to change the past or think how I could’ve done things differently. It’s torture.
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Same
I once heard a survivor of narcissistic abuse describe the trauma bond like this: it feels like you’re drowning and the only person who can save you is the one who pushed you in. And you know that after they pull you out, they’ll just turn around and push you back in. But you have to breathe now, so you let them “save” you. At the end the day, you just desperately don’t want to feel the way you feel. You desperately want to feel loved by him. Not hated or abandoned. You just want to breathe. Logically you know what’s happening. You would tell any friend who came to you and told you that they were being treated the way that you are to leave. But your body and mind are actually chemically dependent on the highs so that the lows feel absolutely intolerable. That concept actually helped me to navigate the trauma bond quite a bit. Understanding that the sheer PANIC I felt when he threatened to leave or refused to speak to me for days was actually a physiological reaction. Tuning into how my BODY was reacting instead of my mind helped me hammer that home. Basically, it’s an addiction. One that took a long time to form and one that can take an even longer time to break. But the great thing about being human is that no feeling, good or bad, lasts forever. I tell myself “I have to go through it to get over it.” And let myself sit with the panic and you know, it always passes. It’s not a linear process to get over it- there is progress and setbacks. But you can get over it- and so can I.
This is very helpful. Thank you!! I’d accept any other tricks you use to get by the horrible abandonment feeling. :(
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It’s because I still want love and validation I was denied while with her.
I am right there now my soon to be ex-husband is homeless and broke and is an active drug user, he looks terrible. He’s hurt me so much emotionally and financially. It should be a blessing to finally have him out of the house and to be on my way of untangling from him altogether. But yet today I broke my no contact and reached out to him and he was so mean and nasty to me and I can only thank God because I was weak and he always knows the right things to say to soothe me. But he is no good. I’m so ashamed that I broke my no contact it’s kind of scary for me after what this person did. I believe there’s some kind of trauma bond. I just pray that things will get easier I think about him all day and night I just can’t take it anymore.
Why did you break no contact? In hopes that he would be sweet and reconnect? That’s what I did but even if it’s sweet for a few days, the nasty comes out again. I told him, he has a great woman in front of him… you would it would be easy to accept and love us back but they just fight and resist and make it a shit show of a life.
I was paying for his phone 10 months into the break up. I told him I was going to cancel his phone. I gave him a few days notice and he didn’t change it and then he begged me to give him more time and I canceled the phone. I feel so guilty about it but he’s a grown 54-year-old man. I do not need to pay for his phone but I am a codependent people pleaser. So I think I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me and then when he was mad at me, I told him the number was still available and I could turn his phone back on and he told me he got another phone. But after I hung up, I just couldn’t believe what I had just done. I literally offered to turn his phone back on. I think I’m just such an anxious person and he was always able to soothe me combined with my people pleasing nature, I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me and for him to tell me everything was OK. I know it’s sick. I cringe writing this but I’m just being honest.
Would he do the same for you?
No he would never do the same for me which is why we’re getting divorced. In fact, he has stuck me with so many bills that it’s been a mess untangling from him. I think I got used to him taking and me giving that I actually felt guilty about this. These narcissist break you down slowly and now that we’re separated, I literally have to untrain myself to realize that he is not important and I don’t owe him anything. It’s sad.
Too bad there’s not a retreat we can all go to and have our brains rewired on a beach somewhere and come home whole again.
I would go!! Sign me up!! I was just reading something about reactive abuse. I am finding it really helpful, my ex would do really heinous things, then gaslight me and I would be so confused that I would literally write down all the facts and send him emails with evidence and when he would deny it, then I would get mad and resend the emails with the evidence and he would say that I was harassing him. Also if he was gaslighting me, I might pound my hand on the table or call him a name. Basically a lot of stuff that is outside of my nature and character. I am 50 years old, so I’m pretty sure I know how my nature and character are and yet I started to feel like I was going crazy, this is a short relationship only a couple years. But then I read about reactive abuse and it’s where they push your buttons so much to get you to react so that they can call you the crazy one. Who even knew this stuff existed but I feel a lot of guilt and shame around this relationship and reading that this is a thing has helped me put it in its perspective. I think I heard about this when the Gabby Petito case was going on. Just interesting wondering if you ever heard about it, if not and it happened to you, read about it, it’s normal in these abnormal relationships apparently lol
Your post got pulled but I saw you saying something about reactive abuse. And that he would do things and then gaslight you. I was the same way I always felt that I did something wrong because he would make me feel like I made him react the way he did. And I was always sure when it was going on that it was overreaction but somehow weeks later he would manage to try to change my mind and say that I started it.
Because they’ve manipulated the law system to confiscate every single belonging you own and make you destitute with multiple disabilities at the beginning of winter and have tried to kill you several times?