October 21, 2025 • 41 mins
If you find yourself obsessively attached to someone who hurts you, is it a sign of a trauma bond? I’ll tackle this challenging subject, shedding light on why you might stay in a relationship despite enduring hurtful behavior and what this could mean for your sense of self-worth and emotional well-being.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Love and Abuse, the show about navigating the difficult relationship.
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From simple disagreements to emotionally abusive behaviors, you deserve respect and kindness.
All the information on this show is meant for educational purposes only.
Always seek a professional for your mental health and well-being, and always pick your battles wisely. I'm your host, Paul Kolianyi.
(00:25):
Speaking of always seeking a professional for your mental health and well-being, this is especially important for this episode
because I'm going to talk about a trauma bond or trauma bonding, where you're just obsessively connected and attached to the person that's hurting you.
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That comes from being with someone or starting a relationship with someone and falling in love with them, typically.
As you invest more and more into the relationship, you find your happiness, your joy, your sense of worth, your sense of meaning.
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and this isn't with everyone, but a lot of these components of what make you feel good and even great, and even the best you've
ever felt, all of these components can exist at the beginning of an unhealthy relationship and a toxic relationship, which is also an unhealthy relationship.
But any kind of traumatic or abusive relationship that forms typically forms with the beginning being almost perfect, like
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soulmate kind of perfect, because they are fulfilling everything you want.
And the abusive person who fulfills everything you want doesn't seem abusive.
They seem like the perfect catch, the perfect partner.
So as the relationship continues, as it goes on through the weeks and months and years, you become attached to this person
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who, no matter what they do, if they hurt you, if they call you names, if they intimidate you, if they make you feel guilty,
if they do any type of abusive behavior at all, it's never enough to push you away because of all the good stuff that occurred at the beginning.
And so what ends up happening in the abusive relationship is that the person shows up as near perfect, if not very perfect, at the very beginning.
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And as they introduce their abusive behaviors, you have already invested so much into the relationship and found all this
joy and happiness from the very beginning that you become more tolerant of the abusive behavior and more forgiving.
And I'm not talking about everyone, I'm talking about those who develop a trauma bond, because what ends up happening when
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you are trauma bonded to someone is that you sort of overlook the bad behaviors and stay focused on the good behaviors and
then wait for those good behaviors to come back.
So day after day, after some bad behavior, you hope and wish and pray and wait for the good behaviors, and it becomes like
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a drug, like you're high and then you're low, and then you're high and then you're low.
And so you're in withdrawal, if you want to call it that. you're in withdrawal during the low period and you're waiting for
that high, which is them fulfilling your need to feel valuable, to feel loved, to feel worthy of their affection, because
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they gave it to you in the beginning, but where is it now?
And that's what a trauma bonded person will continuously seek.
They'll continuously seek the affection and attention from the person who has been hurting them recently, but started off not doing that.
So their recent behaviors of becoming hurtful and painful in many ways tend to get minimized, where the focus of the trauma
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bonded person is on everything that was great about the relationship and everything that is great about the relationship today.
So you can have 90% bad moments and that 10% good moment, maybe in a single 24 hour period, is enough to keep you going to
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seek that next good moment next time. But what is it doing?
And again, I emphasized at the beginning that this is why you might need therapy if you're in this state of mind where you
are attached, heavily attached, and maybe even in love with somebody who puts you through any type of suffering only to get
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you to the point where you are craving their attention and affection again, so that you can feel good inside yourself.
And if you are in this state of mind and state of heart where you are fully attached to someone in a way, in a trauma bonded
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way, like I'm talking about where you are seeking attention and affection from somebody who has hurt you because you are looking
for that next high, because you want to feel worthy and lovable inside and you know that they have done or have been able
to do that in the past and are still capable of doing that, then you continually seek it from someone.
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So if you are in that state of mind or state of heart in that trauma bonded state, it's important to know that it is like an obsession.
It's important to know that this type of obsessive or obsession, obsessive behavior or obsession might require a professional
to help you talk through it and walk through it and get out of it.
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I just received a message about somebody saying, I'm in love with this person who has hurt me all these years and I can't get over it.
They're out of my life and really if I were to admit it, I would probably say I would rather have this person in my life than
out of my life, even though they put me through all this hurt and abuse and such.
And so if you look at a trauma bond as an obsessive behavior, and I'm not blaming you if you feel this, I'm telling you to
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look at it this way as if it were an obsession, then you have something else to focus on instead of saying I'm trauma bonded
or I'm in love with this person who hurts me or something like that.
And not only that, obsessions, they tend to have a very, very high, intense period of time that they exist.
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You've been obsessed for weeks or months or maybe even years, sometimes it is years, but that obsession isn't necessarily
about the person, it is the impetus.
The person is the impetus, but the obsession is more about how you feel when they make you feel the way you want to feel.
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And it's not necessarily them making you feel that, it's how you feel when they treat you a certain way.
So what ends up happening is that you seek a certain feeling and you believe that feeling only comes from the person who hurt you.
Why this happens typically is because of the addictive qualities of the love and abuse cycle.
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The reason I call this podcast love and abuse, you are in love with somebody who abuses you and you also tend to associate
abuse with a loving feeling because the next time you get that high where they do make you feel worthy and important and maybe
they even apologize for their behaviors, it's a temporary thing, but you love it so much that you get that high, like that drug high.
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And you want it and you feel it and you are in it and you are very present in it and you just want more of that and you hope it lasts, but it doesn't. It disappears.
And then it's back to the storm, it's back to the difficulty, the challenge, to the mental games and the heart games, the
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people that play with your heart and your emotions. you know, it's called emotional abuse for a reason.
They are abusing your emotions so that you stay in a state of powerlessness so that they can keep their control over you.
and if they can have power over you, then they get to control what you do and how you show up so that they are satisfied or
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they are placated in a way, even though they'll probably never be happy until they start changing and healing themselves and
working on their own dysfunctions and toxic behaviors.
But we can fall in love with people who hurt us and when we fall in love, there's an attachment. That's the imprinting.
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It's sort of like when you're born and your parents imprint on you.
They are your parents and some people say, they're my parents forever and I'll always love them no matter how much they hurt
me because she's my mom or he's my dad or whatever.
Or another way to look at it is you don't have a parent, you don't have that mom, she disappears when you're really young.
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So when you're young, you're always seeking the love of that mom that isn't in your life. and because they had such an impact
in your development and they have imprinted on you, I don't know if that's the best word to use, but they have made an impression
on you so much to the point that you feel this strong attachment of their presence in your life. and when they're not there,
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you miss them terribly or you feel like there's something big missing in your life or you're always looking for the love that
they could never give. all the dysfunctions that we can develop from neglect or abandonment or the feeling of abandonment
because we didn't get enough love or attention from our parents when we were younger.
And so we move forward in life having these missing elements of our childhood and then we meet someone who kind of replaces that.
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This is how a trauma bond can form.
It can form because we are missing something and then we get that something from somebody else and it's so wonderful to have
that we never want to lose it. so we keep the person who is hurting us in our lives because we don't want to lose what we've been missing for so long.
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And that's how I see trauma bonds is that you will be in a relationship with somebody who is filling something that is missing
in your life or fulfilling something that is missing in your life and has been for a long time and you may not even have known it was missing.
You just love the feeling of having it, but losing it is scary.
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So we become attached to the person who is hurting us because we don't want to lose what is fulfilling us and doing that makes us obsessive.
It makes us crave a person who makes us suffer. and if you're craving a person who makes you suffer, I want to give you the
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reminder that you're not craving the person, you're craving the feeling you get when that person is nice and supportive and loving.
You're craving the feeling that you have and you have always wanted to have maybe, or maybe you didn't even realize you wanted
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to have those feelings until you felt them for the first time at the beginning of the relationship.
And so you constantly seek those feelings again and when someone comes along and gives you those feelings times ten sometimes,
you want more of that because it makes you feel good, it makes you feel worthy, it makes you feel important, it makes you feel lovable.
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It makes you feel like you matter to someone and maybe you didn't feel that when you were younger or maybe you did.
But typically what happens is the trauma bond forms because there's already something missing in our lives and we let someone
in so deep that they fulfill those missing parts. but what they're filling it up with are sort of like breadcrumbs, like they
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are leaving breadcrumbs of love and value and happiness. and if you follow those breadcrumbs, then you will find love and
support and happiness and the feelings of worth and just good feelings overall.
And so we follow these breadcrumbs to those feelings and those breadcrumbs are basically the in-between times of the good parts of the relationship.
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So when you are suffering because of emotionally abusive behavior or worse type of abusive behavior, what you're doing is
following the breadcrumbs back to the happy times. Those breadcrumbs are the in-between moments.
So you're suffering for 60, 70, 80% of a day and you know that the breadcrumbs will lead to a happy moment, so you follow
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those breadcrumbs until that happy moment comes. and you convince yourself that the end of every breadcrumb trail is happiness
and that feeds the addictive qualities of the trauma bond. and you get to the end of the trail and you're happy again and
then you realize, ah, now I have another trail to follow during the hard times, during the challenges.
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And all this time, every time you do it, every time you follow the next trail and the next, you're replenishing inside, you're dissolving your sense of self.
This is why most abuse victims say they feel like a shell of their former self, because between the good times, the path that
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has traveled is the path of self-sabotage and self-hurt. and it is suffering at the expense of those tiny little moments of
happiness. and so we suffer to the point where we're happy, which of course is unhealthy and it's a poison for your system
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to follow these breadcrumbs in between each happy or feel-good moment.
Because I've never heard anyone say every time I followed a path to the point of happiness I felt better for having followed
that path and then the next path I follow makes me feel even better.
It's not a progression, it's a digression, it's a degradation of who you are inside.
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It's the hollowing out of you and each path you follow continues to hollow you out.
So the hollow effect creates a shell and pretty soon you're walking around as that shell looking for that fulfillment to fill
you inside what's missing. and guess what's missing?
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Everything that was lost between every happy moment and that's just, that's no way to live.
I don't want you living like that and I'm certainly not blaming you for that because this is how the brain works.
You are at the mercy of your brain, you are at the mercy of what your brain is hardwired to do. Your brain looks for the rewards.
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How can I feel good in this moment?
All I have to do is follow this path of suffering and the next path that's suffering and the next path. and as I follow these
paths of suffering, I will slowly degrade inside and then I finally find that happiness. There's my reward.
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Breaking the cycle of trauma bonds requires either therapy because, like I said at the beginning of the show, this could be
the direction you need to go if you are fully trauma bonded to someone that you used to be with or you're with now.
So if you feel this strong need and this strong desire and even this deep infatuation with somebody who hurts you, that is
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something you definitely want to address inside you and maybe even talk to somebody about.
Because trauma bonds are very much like obsessive behaviors and obsessive behaviors are one of the most difficult behaviors to heal in oneself. I know this.
I used to be obsessive in my 20s.
I was always obsessing about what my partner was doing and I was the emotionally abusive one, but I was still obsessive, which
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of course led to my abusive behaviors. but back then that was very, very difficult to break.
In fact, the only way I broke obsessive behaviors was cold turkey because slowly stopping my obsessive behaviors didn't work.
because anything I did remotely obsessive led to more obsessive behaviors.
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For example, you break up with somebody and you're checking out their social media all the time. I'll just do it once.
Every time you do it once, you're very likely to do it again.
There are very few people who can regulate obsession and it's important to understand if you feel obsessed or not.
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Obsession is I can't think of anything else but that and I need to do things in order to make that present or a focus in my life. That would be obsession.
I can't do anything else but make that a focus or I can go to work, but I can't stop thinking about this other person. and
I need to know what that other person is doing and I'm going to take time to do that and then I get home and that's all I
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do is focus on them and wait for them to call and wait for this and look for that.
If your mind is always on the object of your obsession, then you are obsessed.
The object of your focus is constantly there and that obsession may be the trauma bond.
I'm not trying to diagnose or anything here, I'm just saying that as a former obsessor and as someone who's worked with people
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who have been obsessed and have been and are in trauma bonds, I can guarantee you if you don't stop, you will continue.
That's why sometimes professional intervention is required and if you feel like you can't stop and you have been working on
this, let me give you some pointers.
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One of them is cold turkey is best.
Just stop because every time you feed it, it's like an alcoholic and somebody who really can't control their intake of alcohol.
They have just one drink and then four hours later they're blotto.
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They're wasted. and sorry to be so graphic, but that's what happens.
They just continue and I'm not saying every alcoholic does this, but a lot of alcoholics, if they're an alcoholic, one drink
is usually the door that opens it to more.
So I have one drink, okay I had one drink, I'll just have one more drink. This is what obsessive behavior is. It is the addiction.
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Okay, I'm just going to look at one post they made on social media, then suddenly hours later you have buried yourself in
everything they're talking about and you're looking at the friends of their friends because they hung out together that night. You can't get away from it. You open the door to more.
You have to be careful about opening the door to more.
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That's why I believe in cold turkey when it comes to obsessive behaviors, is that you just need to quit. That's one pointer.
Another pointer is accepting the truth of what is. That's hard too.
That's like a cold turkey behavior in itself. I can't accept the truth. That might be what you're saying.
I can't accept the truth that we'll never be together again. I can't accept it.
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Then you'll stay obsessed and you'll stay trauma bonded.
And I know what I'm saying is very simplified and it's just not easy to do. I know that.
But I'm hoping to plant that seed in your brain if you need it so it can blossom into something that is healthy and helpful for you.
I remember being obsessed and looking at social media of my ex, I think my ex-wife at the time.
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That was probably like 15 years ago as of this recording.
And I'm just constantly looking, constantly trying to figure out who she's with, who she's talking to, who she's dating. Is she dating? Is she happy?
Is she happier than she was with me? Obsess, obsess, obsess. It will drive you nuts. It drove me nuts.
I found myself doing that for months. Just going back, going back. Maybe she'll change her mind. Because what am I looking for? I'm looking for hope.
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I'm looking for the possibility that she's thinking about me.
Maybe she'll post something that's about me. I miss my ex.
That would be something that I would hope for back then.
I miss him and I'm not sure if I should call him up and ask him how he's doing. It's not going to happen. That's what I had to accept. It's not going to happen.
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And by me paying attention to every single little thing that she does, it doesn't change anything that it's over now. It's over.
And I have to accept that it's over.
And in order to accept that it's over, I have to let that person go.
That is so hard for the obsessed person.
It is so hard for anyone who is trauma bonded to someone else to accept that they are no longer a part of your life and will not be.
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There's a good reason we say they will no longer be a part of my life. There's a good reason for that.
Even if they will be a part of your life someday.
But the reason is when you accept that someone is finally gone, your focus ends up back on yourself. No longer obsessing about them.
Maybe thinking about them a lot, but no longer obsessing and checking and looking into trying to meet them in different places, hoping you'll run into each other.
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Taking that away from yourself causes you to focus on what you need to do for you to heal so that just in case you do meet again, you're a different person. You need to be.
You need to be a different person in order to meet anyone that you've been with that didn't work out.
So that when you see the old behaviors come out, you can tell yourself, Oh yeah, that's what happened.
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And that's why it didn't work out.
And that's what caused me all this pain.
And that's what caused me to have to rebuild who I was because I lost all of myself when I was with them.
And it's hard to be in that space when you are trauma bonded because you are so obsessed about getting them back instead of obsessing about healing yourself. And that can be so detrimental.
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It can put you in the same place you were before because let's just say they come back and they want you back. Who are you? You're the same person.
You haven't changed because you've been focused on them and you haven't focused on yourself and what you need to do for yourself.
And if you don't focus on yourself, you don't know what you need to heal in yourself, which might be the fear of abandonment,
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the fear of rejection, the love you didn't get as a child, the neglect that you felt growing up or the perceived neglect that
you felt growing up, the lack of support and love that you really wanted but didn't get.
Or maybe you did get, but it didn't come in a way that fulfilled you or landed.
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And so you're looking for it in others.
And so when we walk into a relationship with something missing, something deep like that missing, we seek it from another
person and we make them the source of what's missing.
And when we make someone else the source of what's missing, our life feels more complete with them, but because it's still
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missing in us, when they start misbehaving, when they start being abusive, we want what's missing back. We want that back.
So we stick around until we get it back and we'll be stuck with a person who is able to feed it to us, drip feed it every now and then, that good feeling.
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But then we have to follow the breadcrumb trail of suffering in order to get to that good feeling again.
And that keeps us in the up and down love and abuse state of a trauma bond.
And we are stuck there until we pull or rip ourselves out of it.
But the point I'm making now is that if you don't stop obsessing and don't stop thinking about and doing things that keep
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them in your mind constantly, if you don't stop that, then you won't be able to heal any type of dysfunction or deficit inside
of you that puts you in that state in the first place. This is like, it's hard. It's hard to quit smoking. It's hard to quit drinking.
It's hard to quit being addicted to drugs.
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It's hard to quit being addicted to what you think is love.
And when we define love to contain all this abusive behavior, we set ourselves up for failure.
We think in order to feel worthy and lovable, we have to be abused.
And of course, you know this illogically.
You know that's not what love is supposed to look like.
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Love is not supposed to look like that.
When we meet someone who completes us, a phrase I'm not fond of, we might be fulfilling a deficit or dysfunction inside of
us that we need to heal so that they aren't the source of that completion.
It doesn't mean we can't find happiness with others.
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It doesn't mean we can't extend and enhance love in ourselves and for others.
It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy someone so much that when they're gone, we do miss them.
What I'm talking about is a dysfunction or deficit inside of you that may be in there, that you may have brought into the
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relationship that wasn't fulfilled enough or wasn't healed enough that when you met a certain person, they made you think
that they were the cure for what was wrong. They needed healing inside of you.
And that's why you might seek it again and again.
That's the high that you're looking for in between all the lows.
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I need that pill to get rid of my headache.
That's the high of all the times when you have a headache, you finally take that pill and the headache's gone.
I'm not saying you can cold turkey quit a headache. I wish you could.
But I know you can cold turkey this and it will take a lot of willpower because the first thing you want to do is check your
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phone and check social media and check this and check that.
But where your focus needs to be is on yourself and figure out what was missing that they were able to fulfill and that you
attribute to them and you are making them the source of that fulfillment.
Like your sense of worth or feeling like you're not lovable enough and this person made you feel lovable.
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They are not the only source of that.
They become that source by making you feel that way in the beginning, but when they become toxic later on, not much later,
but they become toxic pretty soon, then they are poisoning your definitions of what it feels like to be in love.
And it's important that you know that's not what love looks like.
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That's what manipulation and abuse look like.
Is that they give you those highs, they give you those loving feelings, they keep stringing you along, making you follow those
breadcrumbs because they know that if you're fulfilled at least X amount of times in a given week that you won't leave or
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you won't get sick of them or whatever.
Because there is a point, there is a point where if you don't feel any love at all and it's nothing but abusive behavior,
you will reach a level of toleration that you can't handle anymore.
You will reach a threshold and that threshold will be the point where you finally say, I'm not getting anything from this relationship.
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Sometimes it's better when that happens to wake you up faster.
I don't mean that you're asleep, but it kind of pushes you into a decision.
It pushes you into taking care of yourself instead of constantly seeking something that you can't get from another person.
So it is kind of a better thing when they don't treat you nice at all, even though I never ever want you to go through that.
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But it does force you into a decision.
It does help you become more accepting of what you're dealing with.
And it really sucks when they are loving this percentage of time and then the rest of the time they're abusive, but you know
that that loving moment is going to come again. But you know the drill.
It's a repeated cycle of ups and downs and love and abuse and it never stops.
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And so my next suggestion for you to break this trauma bond is to accept that it will never stop.
I promise you it will never stop. How can I make that promise?
Because if I'm wrong and it does stop, you win.
But accepting that I'm right helps you accept that the relationship that you might be obsessing over is toxic and that will
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force you to focus on yourself and what you need to do to heal so that you can worry about what you value and what your boundaries
are and learning to understand yourself so much to the point where you won't allow someone to treat you like that.
Not only understanding yourself but loving yourself so much and respecting yourself so much that you won't allow that to happen.
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Like one person wrote to me and said, I didn't want to admit that emotional abuse or he was emotionally abusive because that
would have meant that I was allowing it for all this time.
And I told her, I said, this isn't about you allowing it, it's about you finally figuring out what's happening and getting
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to the point where you are no longer tolerant of the behavior where you do finally say, I will not allow this.
So it's not even, I will not allow this anymore because in the past it's not like you were allowing it.
It's just that you were tolerant of it and you were resilient, which we're all taught to be.
You got to be resilient, but really you shouldn't be resilient of abusive behavior. It needs to stop.
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I will not allow this in my life.
That's the level of tolerance and that is your threshold when you finally get to that point and you say, nope, I'm not going to allow this.
And then from that point on, a week later, a month later, you can say, I have not been allowing that into my life anymore,
even though they've tried or even though they've accomplished it, they've succeeded it.
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Now you can say, I am no longer allowing this into my life.
Usually when you get to that point, that threshold point, you have developed a new mindset. You're rewiring your mind. You're saying, this is it. I'm changing direction, changing course. The ship turns now.
And from this point on, things will be different. It may take some time.
You may have some planning to do.
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You may have some packing to do or whatever you're doing or creating a support system for yourself or even having a conversation
with the person who's hurting you where you say, that's enough. Or I'm leaving. That's it. Assuming they're not dangerous.
That's my caveat in episodes where I talk about if you are going to leave, you need to just be careful if they're dangerous.
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If they're dangerous, it's a battle you don't want to pick.
So you might have to make alternate arrangements.
You might have to have somebody with you.
If you're leaving, you might have to leave without their knowledge.
So I don't want to tell you this is what you say to a person if they're dangerous.
But in most cases, most people that write to me, they're in an emotionally abusive relationship, not a physically abusive one.
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And they usually don't fear the physical abuse. Not that it can't happen.
But it's always wise of me and responsible of me to say, pick your battles wisely because you don't know what's going to happen.
And you just have to be prepared that hopefully that person is not dangerous or violent.
But it's just good to keep in mind.
You don't know how somebody's going to react when you finally give them the bad news.
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But sometimes we know people well enough that we do know.
But I want to make sure that I at least say that.
Just in case somebody's listening who's never heard me before and never heard me talk about leaving an abusive person. Sometimes it can be dangerous.
And sometimes it's the impetus that actually changes an abusive person.
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They get to the point where they say, what? You're leaving? What do you mean? Because it's never happened before.
And suddenly they realize, oh, you were serious this whole time.
You were serious when you said I was hurting you. Oh, I didn't take you seriously.
I didn't think that was really that painful to you because you never left.
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And here you are saying you're leaving.
Oh, I know I sound like an idiot.
I sound like a person who should have figured this out a long time ago.
Because the abuse victim is going to say, you didn't see me crying every night.
You didn't see how depressed I was.
You didn't see how we had no happiness in our relationship.
You didn't think any of that had to do with how you were behaving.
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Most abusive people aren't going to say, yes, I knew.
They're going to say, well, I didn't think it was me.
I just believed that if you did what I said, we'd both be happy.
And as silly as that sounds, that's most of the people that come into my Healed Being program. They get to that point.
They get to that point of, oh, this really is serious.
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They really are hurting and I really am hurting them.
Some people don't even realize they're doing it, even though, like I said, you could be suffering and they could even see
you're suffering, but they just don't connect the dots.
And I'm not saying that some abusers don't know they're doing it. Some of them do.
Some of them know exactly what they're doing.
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And sometimes the only way to find out if they're capable of healing is how they change when you're leaving. Will they change when you're leaving?
So some people won't leave hoping they'll change, but they never change because they won't leave.
I know it's a mind boggling sometimes, but that's what happens often.
(35:52):
Over 95% of the people that joined my Healed Being program, they had to experience someone threatening to leave or leaving
in order for them to finally get it.
And for those who are listening right now, who are on the other side of this, who are the emotionally abusive people who might
(36:12):
be experiencing this or might be listening to me trying to figure out why your partner is listening to me or something like that.
If you're on that side, I'm not putting you down for this.
I'm not saying that you're a bad person.
I'm not saying that you're dumb or anything like that.
I'm saying that sometimes you don't get it until you get it.
Sometimes you don't realize the lifelong behaviors that you've been doing are harmful.
(36:34):
Sometimes you were taught that love required control. Love required gilting someone into compliance.
I was never taught a healthy definition of love.
If you want to know why I was emotionally abusive when I was younger, it's because I lived with an alcoholic and a people pleasing mom.
(36:55):
And I'm not necessarily blaming them, but they were a heavy influence on me.
And all I learned was it's better to manipulate the circumstances in order to get someone to do what you want instead of allow someone to be who they are.
Because my mom tried to manipulate every single circumstance with my alcoholic stepfather in order to have a happy life.
(37:20):
And so again, I'm not blaming them, but they were the primary influence in my life. And they didn't know any better. My mom didn't know any better.
She was just trying to deal with the abusive relationship.
And so I learned a lot from my mom.
And she's in a much better relationship today.
But that is how I grew up and how I learned how to love others.
(37:41):
And my love was a very toxic love until I learned. Until I figured it out.
Until somebody left me and I finally realized, oh wait, I am the common denominator for all my relationship breakups.
And I'm the one who should look at myself to heal myself instead of trying to change and control other people.
I get it now, but I didn't get it before that.
(38:02):
So if you're the emotionally abusive person who's listening to me for the first time or the hundredth time, then I want to
let you know that there is a way out of it.
And I want you to heal from this. It's your upbringing.
It's the way you learned how to love or the way you learned how to connect with others and relate to others.
(38:24):
It's all these patterns inside yourself that were wired in you from a long time ago.
And there are those of you listening that I know want to change and will change.
And then there are those listening that are in abusive relationships who don't believe their partner can change and they may be right.
(38:44):
I want the people who are abusive to prove those people wrong by healing, even if you lose the relationship, because it's
so important that you heal inside so that you don't bring whatever toxic behaviors you have into the next relationship.
So talking to the emotionally abusive people out there who are listening right now, bring the best version of yourself into the next relationship. And that requires healing. That requires doing the work. Join my Healed Being Program.
(39:17):
At least get the free lessons or do something. Talk to a professional. Do something.
Because what you have gotten in the relationship, the unhappiness, the sometimes depression, the confusion, the sadness, all
the bad stuff that you don't want in a relationship, if you're causing that or if you believe you're causing that, you're
(39:40):
going to get it over and over again until you change some substantial foundational stuff inside of you. Yes, it's hard work. It's worth it, though.
And to the victims of abusive behaviors and to those in any type of trauma bond situation or just wanted to learn more about
trauma bonding, I hope this episode has been helpful.
(40:01):
And remember, you don't deserve to be mistreated or abused in any way.
Because everything about you is perfect as it is. All your imperfections are perfect. They are. You are amazing.
And I want you to remember that always. I appreciate you.
(40:22):
Thank you for listening to another episode of Love and Abuse.
Share this episode with others who may need it.
Love and Abuse is the official podcast of The Mean Workbook, an assessment and healing guide for difficult relationships.
The assessment pinpoints the behaviors causing you to feel bad and the rest of the workbook helps you understand what your options are going forward. Gain clarity on your relationship today. Visit loveandabuse.com for more information.
(40:45):
And if you've discovered that you are doing the hurtful behaviors to someone that you care about and you want to change that
about yourself, sign up for the life changing program that walks you through the entire process of healing from being emotionally abusive.
It has changed thousands of lives and relationships and can change yours too.
Visit healedbeing.com to start with some free lessons right away.
And if you're looking for a safer way to listen to this show where all the titles to the episodes are changed, click on the
(41:10):
safe listening button on the podcast page over at loveandabuse. com.
This show exists to remind you that you are not alone and you're not going crazy.
You are worthy of respect, kindness and love.
And you deserve to be accepted exactly as you are. Stay strong, we'll talk again soon.
Welcome to Love and Abuse, the show about navigating the difficult relationship.
(00:05):
From simple disagreements to emotionally abusive behaviors, you deserve respect and kindness.
All the information on this show is meant for educational purposes only.
Always seek a professional for your mental health and well-being, and always pick your battles wisely. I'm your host, Paul Kolianyi.
(00:25):
Speaking of always seeking a professional for your mental health and well-being, this is especially important for this episode
because I'm going to talk about a trauma bond or trauma bonding, where you're just obsessively connected and attached to the person that's hurting you.
(00:46):
That comes from being with someone or starting a relationship with someone and falling in love with them, typically.
As you invest more and more into the relationship, you find your happiness, your joy, your sense of worth, your sense of meaning.
(01:08):
and this isn't with everyone, but a lot of these components of what make you feel good and even great, and even the best you've
ever felt, all of these components can exist at the beginning of an unhealthy relationship and a toxic relationship, which is also an unhealthy relationship.
But any kind of traumatic or abusive relationship that forms typically forms with the beginning being almost perfect, like
(01:42):
soulmate kind of perfect, because they are fulfilling everything you want.
And the abusive person who fulfills everything you want doesn't seem abusive.
They seem like the perfect catch, the perfect partner.
So as the relationship continues, as it goes on through the weeks and months and years, you become attached to this person
(02:08):
who, no matter what they do, if they hurt you, if they call you names, if they intimidate you, if they make you feel guilty,
if they do any type of abusive behavior at all, it's never enough to push you away because of all the good stuff that occurred at the beginning.
And so what ends up happening in the abusive relationship is that the person shows up as near perfect, if not very perfect, at the very beginning.
(02:37):
And as they introduce their abusive behaviors, you have already invested so much into the relationship and found all this
joy and happiness from the very beginning that you become more tolerant of the abusive behavior and more forgiving.
And I'm not talking about everyone, I'm talking about those who develop a trauma bond, because what ends up happening when
(03:02):
you are trauma bonded to someone is that you sort of overlook the bad behaviors and stay focused on the good behaviors and
then wait for those good behaviors to come back.
So day after day, after some bad behavior, you hope and wish and pray and wait for the good behaviors, and it becomes like
(03:27):
a drug, like you're high and then you're low, and then you're high and then you're low.
And so you're in withdrawal, if you want to call it that. you're in withdrawal during the low period and you're waiting for
that high, which is them fulfilling your need to feel valuable, to feel loved, to feel worthy of their affection, because
(03:54):
they gave it to you in the beginning, but where is it now?
And that's what a trauma bonded person will continuously seek.
They'll continuously seek the affection and attention from the person who has been hurting them recently, but started off not doing that.
So their recent behaviors of becoming hurtful and painful in many ways tend to get minimized, where the focus of the trauma
(04:26):
bonded person is on everything that was great about the relationship and everything that is great about the relationship today.
So you can have 90% bad moments and that 10% good moment, maybe in a single 24 hour period, is enough to keep you going to
(04:46):
seek that next good moment next time. But what is it doing?
And again, I emphasized at the beginning that this is why you might need therapy if you're in this state of mind where you
are attached, heavily attached, and maybe even in love with somebody who puts you through any type of suffering only to get
(05:07):
you to the point where you are craving their attention and affection again, so that you can feel good inside yourself.
And if you are in this state of mind and state of heart where you are fully attached to someone in a way, in a trauma bonded
(05:28):
way, like I'm talking about where you are seeking attention and affection from somebody who has hurt you because you are looking
for that next high, because you want to feel worthy and lovable inside and you know that they have done or have been able
to do that in the past and are still capable of doing that, then you continually seek it from someone.
(05:49):
So if you are in that state of mind or state of heart in that trauma bonded state, it's important to know that it is like an obsession.
It's important to know that this type of obsessive or obsession, obsessive behavior or obsession might require a professional
to help you talk through it and walk through it and get out of it.
(06:13):
I just received a message about somebody saying, I'm in love with this person who has hurt me all these years and I can't get over it.
They're out of my life and really if I were to admit it, I would probably say I would rather have this person in my life than
out of my life, even though they put me through all this hurt and abuse and such.
And so if you look at a trauma bond as an obsessive behavior, and I'm not blaming you if you feel this, I'm telling you to
(06:44):
look at it this way as if it were an obsession, then you have something else to focus on instead of saying I'm trauma bonded
or I'm in love with this person who hurts me or something like that.
And not only that, obsessions, they tend to have a very, very high, intense period of time that they exist.
(07:07):
You've been obsessed for weeks or months or maybe even years, sometimes it is years, but that obsession isn't necessarily
about the person, it is the impetus.
The person is the impetus, but the obsession is more about how you feel when they make you feel the way you want to feel.
(07:28):
And it's not necessarily them making you feel that, it's how you feel when they treat you a certain way.
So what ends up happening is that you seek a certain feeling and you believe that feeling only comes from the person who hurt you.
Why this happens typically is because of the addictive qualities of the love and abuse cycle.
(07:53):
The reason I call this podcast love and abuse, you are in love with somebody who abuses you and you also tend to associate
abuse with a loving feeling because the next time you get that high where they do make you feel worthy and important and maybe
they even apologize for their behaviors, it's a temporary thing, but you love it so much that you get that high, like that drug high.
(08:20):
And you want it and you feel it and you are in it and you are very present in it and you just want more of that and you hope it lasts, but it doesn't. It disappears.
And then it's back to the storm, it's back to the difficulty, the challenge, to the mental games and the heart games, the
(08:41):
people that play with your heart and your emotions. you know, it's called emotional abuse for a reason.
They are abusing your emotions so that you stay in a state of powerlessness so that they can keep their control over you.
and if they can have power over you, then they get to control what you do and how you show up so that they are satisfied or
(09:06):
they are placated in a way, even though they'll probably never be happy until they start changing and healing themselves and
working on their own dysfunctions and toxic behaviors.
But we can fall in love with people who hurt us and when we fall in love, there's an attachment. That's the imprinting.
(09:26):
It's sort of like when you're born and your parents imprint on you.
They are your parents and some people say, they're my parents forever and I'll always love them no matter how much they hurt
me because she's my mom or he's my dad or whatever.
Or another way to look at it is you don't have a parent, you don't have that mom, she disappears when you're really young.
(09:47):
So when you're young, you're always seeking the love of that mom that isn't in your life. and because they had such an impact
in your development and they have imprinted on you, I don't know if that's the best word to use, but they have made an impression
on you so much to the point that you feel this strong attachment of their presence in your life. and when they're not there,
(10:14):
you miss them terribly or you feel like there's something big missing in your life or you're always looking for the love that
they could never give. all the dysfunctions that we can develop from neglect or abandonment or the feeling of abandonment
because we didn't get enough love or attention from our parents when we were younger.
And so we move forward in life having these missing elements of our childhood and then we meet someone who kind of replaces that.
(10:43):
This is how a trauma bond can form.
It can form because we are missing something and then we get that something from somebody else and it's so wonderful to have
that we never want to lose it. so we keep the person who is hurting us in our lives because we don't want to lose what we've been missing for so long.
(11:04):
And that's how I see trauma bonds is that you will be in a relationship with somebody who is filling something that is missing
in your life or fulfilling something that is missing in your life and has been for a long time and you may not even have known it was missing.
You just love the feeling of having it, but losing it is scary.
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So we become attached to the person who is hurting us because we don't want to lose what is fulfilling us and doing that makes us obsessive.
It makes us crave a person who makes us suffer. and if you're craving a person who makes you suffer, I want to give you the
(11:46):
reminder that you're not craving the person, you're craving the feeling you get when that person is nice and supportive and loving.
You're craving the feeling that you have and you have always wanted to have maybe, or maybe you didn't even realize you wanted
(12:07):
to have those feelings until you felt them for the first time at the beginning of the relationship.
And so you constantly seek those feelings again and when someone comes along and gives you those feelings times ten sometimes,
you want more of that because it makes you feel good, it makes you feel worthy, it makes you feel important, it makes you feel lovable.
(12:29):
It makes you feel like you matter to someone and maybe you didn't feel that when you were younger or maybe you did.
But typically what happens is the trauma bond forms because there's already something missing in our lives and we let someone
in so deep that they fulfill those missing parts. but what they're filling it up with are sort of like breadcrumbs, like they
(12:58):
are leaving breadcrumbs of love and value and happiness. and if you follow those breadcrumbs, then you will find love and
support and happiness and the feelings of worth and just good feelings overall.
And so we follow these breadcrumbs to those feelings and those breadcrumbs are basically the in-between times of the good parts of the relationship.
(13:25):
So when you are suffering because of emotionally abusive behavior or worse type of abusive behavior, what you're doing is
following the breadcrumbs back to the happy times. Those breadcrumbs are the in-between moments.
So you're suffering for 60, 70, 80% of a day and you know that the breadcrumbs will lead to a happy moment, so you follow
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those breadcrumbs until that happy moment comes. and you convince yourself that the end of every breadcrumb trail is happiness
and that feeds the addictive qualities of the trauma bond. and you get to the end of the trail and you're happy again and
then you realize, ah, now I have another trail to follow during the hard times, during the challenges.
(14:16):
And all this time, every time you do it, every time you follow the next trail and the next, you're replenishing inside, you're dissolving your sense of self.
This is why most abuse victims say they feel like a shell of their former self, because between the good times, the path that
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has traveled is the path of self-sabotage and self-hurt. and it is suffering at the expense of those tiny little moments of
happiness. and so we suffer to the point where we're happy, which of course is unhealthy and it's a poison for your system
(14:58):
to follow these breadcrumbs in between each happy or feel-good moment.
Because I've never heard anyone say every time I followed a path to the point of happiness I felt better for having followed
that path and then the next path I follow makes me feel even better.
It's not a progression, it's a digression, it's a degradation of who you are inside.
(15:24):
It's the hollowing out of you and each path you follow continues to hollow you out.
So the hollow effect creates a shell and pretty soon you're walking around as that shell looking for that fulfillment to fill
you inside what's missing. and guess what's missing?
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Everything that was lost between every happy moment and that's just, that's no way to live.
I don't want you living like that and I'm certainly not blaming you for that because this is how the brain works.
You are at the mercy of your brain, you are at the mercy of what your brain is hardwired to do. Your brain looks for the rewards.
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How can I feel good in this moment?
All I have to do is follow this path of suffering and the next path that's suffering and the next path. and as I follow these
paths of suffering, I will slowly degrade inside and then I finally find that happiness. There's my reward.
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Breaking the cycle of trauma bonds requires either therapy because, like I said at the beginning of the show, this could be
the direction you need to go if you are fully trauma bonded to someone that you used to be with or you're with now.
So if you feel this strong need and this strong desire and even this deep infatuation with somebody who hurts you, that is
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something you definitely want to address inside you and maybe even talk to somebody about.
Because trauma bonds are very much like obsessive behaviors and obsessive behaviors are one of the most difficult behaviors to heal in oneself. I know this.
I used to be obsessive in my 20s.
I was always obsessing about what my partner was doing and I was the emotionally abusive one, but I was still obsessive, which
(17:28):
of course led to my abusive behaviors. but back then that was very, very difficult to break.
In fact, the only way I broke obsessive behaviors was cold turkey because slowly stopping my obsessive behaviors didn't work.
because anything I did remotely obsessive led to more obsessive behaviors.
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For example, you break up with somebody and you're checking out their social media all the time. I'll just do it once.
Every time you do it once, you're very likely to do it again.
There are very few people who can regulate obsession and it's important to understand if you feel obsessed or not.
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Obsession is I can't think of anything else but that and I need to do things in order to make that present or a focus in my life. That would be obsession.
I can't do anything else but make that a focus or I can go to work, but I can't stop thinking about this other person. and
I need to know what that other person is doing and I'm going to take time to do that and then I get home and that's all I
(18:35):
do is focus on them and wait for them to call and wait for this and look for that.
If your mind is always on the object of your obsession, then you are obsessed.
The object of your focus is constantly there and that obsession may be the trauma bond.
I'm not trying to diagnose or anything here, I'm just saying that as a former obsessor and as someone who's worked with people
(19:01):
who have been obsessed and have been and are in trauma bonds, I can guarantee you if you don't stop, you will continue.
That's why sometimes professional intervention is required and if you feel like you can't stop and you have been working on
this, let me give you some pointers.
(19:22):
One of them is cold turkey is best.
Just stop because every time you feed it, it's like an alcoholic and somebody who really can't control their intake of alcohol.
They have just one drink and then four hours later they're blotto.
(19:42):
They're wasted. and sorry to be so graphic, but that's what happens.
They just continue and I'm not saying every alcoholic does this, but a lot of alcoholics, if they're an alcoholic, one drink
is usually the door that opens it to more.
So I have one drink, okay I had one drink, I'll just have one more drink. This is what obsessive behavior is. It is the addiction.
(20:05):
Okay, I'm just going to look at one post they made on social media, then suddenly hours later you have buried yourself in
everything they're talking about and you're looking at the friends of their friends because they hung out together that night. You can't get away from it. You open the door to more.
You have to be careful about opening the door to more.
(20:25):
That's why I believe in cold turkey when it comes to obsessive behaviors, is that you just need to quit. That's one pointer.
Another pointer is accepting the truth of what is. That's hard too.
That's like a cold turkey behavior in itself. I can't accept the truth. That might be what you're saying.
I can't accept the truth that we'll never be together again. I can't accept it.
(20:46):
Then you'll stay obsessed and you'll stay trauma bonded.
And I know what I'm saying is very simplified and it's just not easy to do. I know that.
But I'm hoping to plant that seed in your brain if you need it so it can blossom into something that is healthy and helpful for you.
I remember being obsessed and looking at social media of my ex, I think my ex-wife at the time.
(21:11):
That was probably like 15 years ago as of this recording.
And I'm just constantly looking, constantly trying to figure out who she's with, who she's talking to, who she's dating. Is she dating? Is she happy?
Is she happier than she was with me? Obsess, obsess, obsess. It will drive you nuts. It drove me nuts.
I found myself doing that for months. Just going back, going back. Maybe she'll change her mind. Because what am I looking for? I'm looking for hope.
(21:38):
I'm looking for the possibility that she's thinking about me.
Maybe she'll post something that's about me. I miss my ex.
That would be something that I would hope for back then.
I miss him and I'm not sure if I should call him up and ask him how he's doing. It's not going to happen. That's what I had to accept. It's not going to happen.
(22:00):
And by me paying attention to every single little thing that she does, it doesn't change anything that it's over now. It's over.
And I have to accept that it's over.
And in order to accept that it's over, I have to let that person go.
That is so hard for the obsessed person.
It is so hard for anyone who is trauma bonded to someone else to accept that they are no longer a part of your life and will not be.
(22:28):
There's a good reason we say they will no longer be a part of my life. There's a good reason for that.
Even if they will be a part of your life someday.
But the reason is when you accept that someone is finally gone, your focus ends up back on yourself. No longer obsessing about them.
Maybe thinking about them a lot, but no longer obsessing and checking and looking into trying to meet them in different places, hoping you'll run into each other.
(22:56):
Taking that away from yourself causes you to focus on what you need to do for you to heal so that just in case you do meet again, you're a different person. You need to be.
You need to be a different person in order to meet anyone that you've been with that didn't work out.
So that when you see the old behaviors come out, you can tell yourself, Oh yeah, that's what happened.
(23:24):
And that's why it didn't work out.
And that's what caused me all this pain.
And that's what caused me to have to rebuild who I was because I lost all of myself when I was with them.
And it's hard to be in that space when you are trauma bonded because you are so obsessed about getting them back instead of obsessing about healing yourself. And that can be so detrimental.
(23:53):
It can put you in the same place you were before because let's just say they come back and they want you back. Who are you? You're the same person.
You haven't changed because you've been focused on them and you haven't focused on yourself and what you need to do for yourself.
And if you don't focus on yourself, you don't know what you need to heal in yourself, which might be the fear of abandonment,
(24:17):
the fear of rejection, the love you didn't get as a child, the neglect that you felt growing up or the perceived neglect that
you felt growing up, the lack of support and love that you really wanted but didn't get.
Or maybe you did get, but it didn't come in a way that fulfilled you or landed.
(24:37):
And so you're looking for it in others.
And so when we walk into a relationship with something missing, something deep like that missing, we seek it from another
person and we make them the source of what's missing.
And when we make someone else the source of what's missing, our life feels more complete with them, but because it's still
(25:00):
missing in us, when they start misbehaving, when they start being abusive, we want what's missing back. We want that back.
So we stick around until we get it back and we'll be stuck with a person who is able to feed it to us, drip feed it every now and then, that good feeling.
(25:20):
But then we have to follow the breadcrumb trail of suffering in order to get to that good feeling again.
And that keeps us in the up and down love and abuse state of a trauma bond.
And we are stuck there until we pull or rip ourselves out of it.
But the point I'm making now is that if you don't stop obsessing and don't stop thinking about and doing things that keep
(25:47):
them in your mind constantly, if you don't stop that, then you won't be able to heal any type of dysfunction or deficit inside
of you that puts you in that state in the first place. This is like, it's hard. It's hard to quit smoking. It's hard to quit drinking.
It's hard to quit being addicted to drugs.
(26:09):
It's hard to quit being addicted to what you think is love.
And when we define love to contain all this abusive behavior, we set ourselves up for failure.
We think in order to feel worthy and lovable, we have to be abused.
And of course, you know this illogically.
You know that's not what love is supposed to look like.
(26:30):
Love is not supposed to look like that.
When we meet someone who completes us, a phrase I'm not fond of, we might be fulfilling a deficit or dysfunction inside of
us that we need to heal so that they aren't the source of that completion.
It doesn't mean we can't find happiness with others.
(26:51):
It doesn't mean we can't extend and enhance love in ourselves and for others.
It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy someone so much that when they're gone, we do miss them.
What I'm talking about is a dysfunction or deficit inside of you that may be in there, that you may have brought into the
(27:11):
relationship that wasn't fulfilled enough or wasn't healed enough that when you met a certain person, they made you think
that they were the cure for what was wrong. They needed healing inside of you.
And that's why you might seek it again and again.
That's the high that you're looking for in between all the lows.
(27:34):
I need that pill to get rid of my headache.
That's the high of all the times when you have a headache, you finally take that pill and the headache's gone.
I'm not saying you can cold turkey quit a headache. I wish you could.
But I know you can cold turkey this and it will take a lot of willpower because the first thing you want to do is check your
(27:59):
phone and check social media and check this and check that.
But where your focus needs to be is on yourself and figure out what was missing that they were able to fulfill and that you
attribute to them and you are making them the source of that fulfillment.
Like your sense of worth or feeling like you're not lovable enough and this person made you feel lovable.
(28:24):
They are not the only source of that.
They become that source by making you feel that way in the beginning, but when they become toxic later on, not much later,
but they become toxic pretty soon, then they are poisoning your definitions of what it feels like to be in love.
And it's important that you know that's not what love looks like.
(28:47):
That's what manipulation and abuse look like.
Is that they give you those highs, they give you those loving feelings, they keep stringing you along, making you follow those
breadcrumbs because they know that if you're fulfilled at least X amount of times in a given week that you won't leave or
(29:07):
you won't get sick of them or whatever.
Because there is a point, there is a point where if you don't feel any love at all and it's nothing but abusive behavior,
you will reach a level of toleration that you can't handle anymore.
You will reach a threshold and that threshold will be the point where you finally say, I'm not getting anything from this relationship.
(29:31):
Sometimes it's better when that happens to wake you up faster.
I don't mean that you're asleep, but it kind of pushes you into a decision.
It pushes you into taking care of yourself instead of constantly seeking something that you can't get from another person.
So it is kind of a better thing when they don't treat you nice at all, even though I never ever want you to go through that.
(29:57):
But it does force you into a decision.
It does help you become more accepting of what you're dealing with.
And it really sucks when they are loving this percentage of time and then the rest of the time they're abusive, but you know
that that loving moment is going to come again. But you know the drill.
It's a repeated cycle of ups and downs and love and abuse and it never stops.
(30:19):
And so my next suggestion for you to break this trauma bond is to accept that it will never stop.
I promise you it will never stop. How can I make that promise?
Because if I'm wrong and it does stop, you win.
But accepting that I'm right helps you accept that the relationship that you might be obsessing over is toxic and that will
(30:43):
force you to focus on yourself and what you need to do to heal so that you can worry about what you value and what your boundaries
are and learning to understand yourself so much to the point where you won't allow someone to treat you like that.
Not only understanding yourself but loving yourself so much and respecting yourself so much that you won't allow that to happen.
(31:03):
Like one person wrote to me and said, I didn't want to admit that emotional abuse or he was emotionally abusive because that
would have meant that I was allowing it for all this time.
And I told her, I said, this isn't about you allowing it, it's about you finally figuring out what's happening and getting
(31:24):
to the point where you are no longer tolerant of the behavior where you do finally say, I will not allow this.
So it's not even, I will not allow this anymore because in the past it's not like you were allowing it.
It's just that you were tolerant of it and you were resilient, which we're all taught to be.
You got to be resilient, but really you shouldn't be resilient of abusive behavior. It needs to stop.
(31:49):
I will not allow this in my life.
That's the level of tolerance and that is your threshold when you finally get to that point and you say, nope, I'm not going to allow this.
And then from that point on, a week later, a month later, you can say, I have not been allowing that into my life anymore,
even though they've tried or even though they've accomplished it, they've succeeded it.
(32:12):
Now you can say, I am no longer allowing this into my life.
Usually when you get to that point, that threshold point, you have developed a new mindset. You're rewiring your mind. You're saying, this is it. I'm changing direction, changing course. The ship turns now.
And from this point on, things will be different. It may take some time.
You may have some planning to do.
(32:34):
You may have some packing to do or whatever you're doing or creating a support system for yourself or even having a conversation
with the person who's hurting you where you say, that's enough. Or I'm leaving. That's it. Assuming they're not dangerous.
That's my caveat in episodes where I talk about if you are going to leave, you need to just be careful if they're dangerous.
(32:58):
If they're dangerous, it's a battle you don't want to pick.
So you might have to make alternate arrangements.
You might have to have somebody with you.
If you're leaving, you might have to leave without their knowledge.
So I don't want to tell you this is what you say to a person if they're dangerous.
But in most cases, most people that write to me, they're in an emotionally abusive relationship, not a physically abusive one.
(33:22):
And they usually don't fear the physical abuse. Not that it can't happen.
But it's always wise of me and responsible of me to say, pick your battles wisely because you don't know what's going to happen.
And you just have to be prepared that hopefully that person is not dangerous or violent.
But it's just good to keep in mind.
You don't know how somebody's going to react when you finally give them the bad news.
(33:42):
But sometimes we know people well enough that we do know.
But I want to make sure that I at least say that.
Just in case somebody's listening who's never heard me before and never heard me talk about leaving an abusive person. Sometimes it can be dangerous.
And sometimes it's the impetus that actually changes an abusive person.
(34:04):
They get to the point where they say, what? You're leaving? What do you mean? Because it's never happened before.
And suddenly they realize, oh, you were serious this whole time.
You were serious when you said I was hurting you. Oh, I didn't take you seriously.
I didn't think that was really that painful to you because you never left.
(34:25):
And here you are saying you're leaving.
Oh, I know I sound like an idiot.
I sound like a person who should have figured this out a long time ago.
Because the abuse victim is going to say, you didn't see me crying every night.
You didn't see how depressed I was.
You didn't see how we had no happiness in our relationship.
You didn't think any of that had to do with how you were behaving.
(34:47):
Most abusive people aren't going to say, yes, I knew.
They're going to say, well, I didn't think it was me.
I just believed that if you did what I said, we'd both be happy.
And as silly as that sounds, that's most of the people that come into my Healed Being program. They get to that point.
They get to that point of, oh, this really is serious.
(35:09):
They really are hurting and I really am hurting them.
Some people don't even realize they're doing it, even though, like I said, you could be suffering and they could even see
you're suffering, but they just don't connect the dots.
And I'm not saying that some abusers don't know they're doing it. Some of them do.
Some of them know exactly what they're doing.
(35:29):
And sometimes the only way to find out if they're capable of healing is how they change when you're leaving. Will they change when you're leaving?
So some people won't leave hoping they'll change, but they never change because they won't leave.
I know it's a mind boggling sometimes, but that's what happens often.
(35:52):
Over 95% of the people that joined my Healed Being program, they had to experience someone threatening to leave or leaving
in order for them to finally get it.
And for those who are listening right now, who are on the other side of this, who are the emotionally abusive people who might
(36:12):
be experiencing this or might be listening to me trying to figure out why your partner is listening to me or something like that.
If you're on that side, I'm not putting you down for this.
I'm not saying that you're a bad person.
I'm not saying that you're dumb or anything like that.
I'm saying that sometimes you don't get it until you get it.
Sometimes you don't realize the lifelong behaviors that you've been doing are harmful.
(36:34):
Sometimes you were taught that love required control. Love required gilting someone into compliance.
I was never taught a healthy definition of love.
If you want to know why I was emotionally abusive when I was younger, it's because I lived with an alcoholic and a people pleasing mom.
(36:55):
And I'm not necessarily blaming them, but they were a heavy influence on me.
And all I learned was it's better to manipulate the circumstances in order to get someone to do what you want instead of allow someone to be who they are.
Because my mom tried to manipulate every single circumstance with my alcoholic stepfather in order to have a happy life.
(37:20):
And so again, I'm not blaming them, but they were the primary influence in my life. And they didn't know any better. My mom didn't know any better.
She was just trying to deal with the abusive relationship.
And so I learned a lot from my mom.
And she's in a much better relationship today.
But that is how I grew up and how I learned how to love others.
(37:41):
And my love was a very toxic love until I learned. Until I figured it out.
Until somebody left me and I finally realized, oh wait, I am the common denominator for all my relationship breakups.
And I'm the one who should look at myself to heal myself instead of trying to change and control other people.
I get it now, but I didn't get it before that.
(38:02):
So if you're the emotionally abusive person who's listening to me for the first time or the hundredth time, then I want to
let you know that there is a way out of it.
And I want you to heal from this. It's your upbringing.
It's the way you learned how to love or the way you learned how to connect with others and relate to others.
(38:24):
It's all these patterns inside yourself that were wired in you from a long time ago.
And there are those of you listening that I know want to change and will change.
And then there are those listening that are in abusive relationships who don't believe their partner can change and they may be right.
(38:44):
I want the people who are abusive to prove those people wrong by healing, even if you lose the relationship, because it's
so important that you heal inside so that you don't bring whatever toxic behaviors you have into the next relationship.
So talking to the emotionally abusive people out there who are listening right now, bring the best version of yourself into the next relationship. And that requires healing. That requires doing the work. Join my Healed Being Program.
(39:17):
At least get the free lessons or do something. Talk to a professional. Do something.
Because what you have gotten in the relationship, the unhappiness, the sometimes depression, the confusion, the sadness, all
the bad stuff that you don't want in a relationship, if you're causing that or if you believe you're causing that, you're
(39:40):
going to get it over and over again until you change some substantial foundational stuff inside of you. Yes, it's hard work. It's worth it, though.
And to the victims of abusive behaviors and to those in any type of trauma bond situation or just wanted to learn more about
trauma bonding, I hope this episode has been helpful.
(40:01):
And remember, you don't deserve to be mistreated or abused in any way.
Because everything about you is perfect as it is. All your imperfections are perfect. They are. You are amazing.
And I want you to remember that always. I appreciate you.
(40:22):
Thank you for listening to another episode of Love and Abuse.
Share this episode with others who may need it.
Love and Abuse is the official podcast of The Mean Workbook, an assessment and healing guide for difficult relationships.
The assessment pinpoints the behaviors causing you to feel bad and the rest of the workbook helps you understand what your options are going forward. Gain clarity on your relationship today. Visit loveandabuse.com for more information.
(40:45):
And if you've discovered that you are doing the hurtful behaviors to someone that you care about and you want to change that
about yourself, sign up for the life changing program that walks you through the entire process of healing from being emotionally abusive.
It has changed thousands of lives and relationships and can change yours too.
Visit healedbeing.com to start with some free lessons right away.
And if you're looking for a safer way to listen to this show where all the titles to the episodes are changed, click on the
(41:10):
safe listening button on the podcast page over at loveandabuse. com.
This show exists to remind you that you are not alone and you're not going crazy.
You are worthy of respect, kindness and love.
And you deserve to be accepted exactly as you are. Stay strong, we'll talk again soon.
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