This is a loooooooooooong one! But so important as far as educating the public! TRAUMA BONDING Abuse by a narcissist is insidious in itself, but it is far reaching as far as psychological damage creating an unhealthy bonding between the target/victim and the narcissist (abuser) called trauma bonding. The narcissist carefully weaves the lying, the cheating, the implicit or explicit threats and insults, and sometimes even physical assault or acts of abuse –with acts of “small kindness,” such as gifts, romantic cards, taking the victim/target out on a date to a nice restaurant, apologies and occasional compliments. Needless to say, in any rational person’s mind, a cute card or a nice compliment couldn’t erase years of abusive behavior. Yet for a target/victim whose independent judgment and autonomy have been severely impaired by extended intimate contact with a narcissist it becomes their reality and normalcy. The target/victim takes each gift, hollow promise and act of kindness as a positive sign, glimmer of hope that the relationship will turn around. The target/victim mistakenly believes that their abusive partner is committed to changing their ways. Targets/victims hope that the narcissist has learned to love and appreciate them as they deserve. Targets want to believe the narcissist even when the pattern of abuse is repeated over and over again, no matter how many times this process repeats itself - this is what trauma bonding is all about! The target/victim clings to the notion that if only they try hard enough and loves the narcissist unconditionally they will eventually see the light. The narcissist in turn, encourages the target/victims false hope for as long as the narcissist desires to string their target/victim along. Seeing that the narcissist can sometimes behave well, the target/victim blames themselves for the times when the narcissist mistreats them. The target/victims life has been reduced to one goal and one dimension – finding ways to please the narcissist. Self-esteem becomes exclusively dependent upon the narcissist’s approval and the flip side of the coin is that the target/victim becomes severely hypersensitive to the narcissist’s disapproval thus the dysfunctional cycle. The fact is that narcissists can’t be pleased. Relationships with them are always about control, never about mutual love. Consequently, the more the narcissist gets from their partners, the more they demand from them. Any target/victim that creates this objective to satisfy a narcissistic partner is therefore bound to eventually suffer from a lowered self-esteem. After years of mistreatment, a target/victim may feel too discouraged and depressed to leave their abuser. The narcissist may have damaged the target/victims self-esteem to the point where they feel that they wouldn’t be attractive to any other person both physically and mentally. Trauma bonding occurs when your safety, happiness, or security depends upon your abuser. It’s in your interest to keep your controlling abuser happy. The bond works for your abuser and keeps you tethered to them. It also, at times, works for you when you start feeling that if you resist and challenge your abuser you are more likely to be abused. For many in abusive relationships, the bond is a strong one – and you will see it as essential to your physical and/ or emotional survival. Here are a few examples: ◾You make excuses for your abuser’s behavior to yourself and others. Your abuser is not mean, it is just that he/she is under a great deal of stress, or tired, etc. ◾You deny the abuse is happening – purely DENIAL because you could never allow abuse in your life BUT you Are being abused. ◾You feel there is no way out – you think that you can never leave them, and when you do get out, you go back to them. ◾You worry how you will survive financially, or practically, on your own. After all, you’re not used to making decisions on your own – how will you ever manage without them? ◾You are isolated from friends and family, and believe that nobody would understand how you feel or be able to help you because it is all just too incredulous for anyone to believe. ◾You live in wait (or hope) that they will return to the good person they once were. You know the one that treated you like a prince/princess? They make promises sometimes but they never fulfill that promise. You carry on waiting and hoping. ◾You feel that you’ve already invested so much time in the relationship, and made so many allowances for them, that payback on your investment must be coming. It isn’t ever going to come to you though. ◾Your self-confidence is so low that you believe nobody else would ever want you. ◾You start to think like the narcissist and modify your behavior accordingly: if I make sure his/her dinner is on the table when they get home, he/she will be pleased and won’t abuse me. If I don’t talk to my friends, the narcissist won’t be insecure and won’t abuse me. If we have a baby, the narcissist will know I’m not going to leave them and they won’t abuse me. It doesn’t work. Narcissists experience great pleasure when they hurt others. They enjoy corrupting their partners so that they too become manipulative, deceptive and callous like them. For the narcissist, destroying their partner from the inside/out–is a personal triumph. They focus their energy in a single-minded fashion on destroying one life at a time, one person at a time. Targets/victims seduced by narcissists enter what psychologists call a “hypnotic state or a fog.” They shut out any aspects of reality that would reveal the truth. They focus instead only on the parts of reality that conform to the distorted perspectives presented by their partner. This logic often applies to the narcissists family members as well. Targets/victims therefore normalize and justify all of the narcissist’s hurtful controlling behavior, sometimes even crossing the line into pathology. The reality of the situation is that the narcissist employs so many mind altering techniques to control their target. Little by little and day by day they bite off another piece of our life. They got us into their grasp by playing with our minds from day on – they were super lovers and chipped away at our brain until they gained enough trust to start injecting their poison to kill our spirit. The strongest person can be thrown into a prison and mentally tortured by their captors until the pain they feel has to be dealt with in a manner to survive. THIS IS WHAT TARGETS/VICTIMS encounter from the abuse a narcissist delivers - and then it becomes a matter of survival. The only way to break this cycle is for the target/victim to go no contact and completely remove themselves from the narcissist and the abuse. Unfortunately for many targets/victims this is almost impossible because the psychological damage from the narcissist has worn them down and they are too vulnerable to escape. The only way to recovery is for the target/victim to seize the reality that this is purely abuse – that and a helping hand to pull them out and back into reality.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 23:23:01 +0000
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