Addicted to Trauma Bonding? WATCH TO THE END! (with Stephanie Carinia, Trauma Expert)

Definition of trauma bonding: Extreme, unidirectional attachment fostered by traumatizing, unpredictable intermittent reinforcement involving a power asymmetry (learning theory and behaviorism).

People confuse intensity with truth and attention with love: they dread loneliness

Trauma coercive bonding: isolation, real or perceived inability to escape

Betrayal trauma (Carnes) and betrayal trauma blindness (Jennifer Freyd et
al.) in BTT (Betrayal Trauma Theory): When you cannot or are not allowed to express your experience of trauma and abuse, breach of trust, disempowerment, negative emotions, and profound betrayal by someone you depend on in any crucial way. Such denial and repression lead to dissociation and a host of long-term mental health disorders.

Attempts to resolve the cognitive dissonance by rationalizing, justifying, minimizing, dissociation (state-dependent memory), malignant optimism (false hope), and autoplastic defenses (self-blaming).

Actually, it is a fantasy defense involving retraumatization during dual mothership phase: unresolved early childhood conflicts, resonance of pain and angst.

Abuser assumes maternal role and provides access to idealized image through his gaze (unconditional love leads to self-love). The victim introjects this gaze.

Then abuser becomes dead mother. Difficult to give up on mother and on one's idealized self, second childhood, second chance to get it right:
righting wrongs, resolving conflicts, unconditional love, being seen as flawless object.

Trauma bonding is often a collaborative form of self-mutilation or self-harm, replete with the same three functions:

1. To numb dysregulated emotions that threaten to overwhelm us; 2. To allow us to feel alive through pain; 3. To punish, defeat, and destroy ourselves.

People remain in abusive relationships because they lack self-confidence, their self-esteem is shot, not least by their "loving, intimate" "partner", and because they are unable to regulate their sense of self-worth.

There are five common fallacies:

HE DEFINES WHO I AM (HE MADE ME)

I AM LUCKY

I am worthless, damaged goods. I am lucky to have found even my abuser. If I leave the relationship, who else would want me and where will I find another partner?

THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS

Life is harsh and it doesn't get much better than this. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but that is merely as an optical illusion. This is as good as it gets.

MY PARTNER IS NOT WORSE THAN OTHERS

Every other partner I may find will have flaws and quirks that I will have to get used to and accommodate all over again. Better stick with what I know. No one guarantees that my next partner will not be even worse than this.

HAPPINESS? BAH!

Life is a serious business. It is not about the selfish pursuit of elusive "happiness". It is about meeting your obligations and getting on with it. At best one can expect companionship and mutual support in old age. Anything more than that is self-defeating and destructive wishful thinking.

Stephanie Carinia's Website: https://www.psychologiststephanie.com/ Instagram   / psychologiststephanie  

Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60...