The Original Trauma Bond
I’ve been thinking a lot about Trauma Bonding lately. That is because I have been submersing myself into information about narcissistic abuse, whether growing up with it, or encountering it in romantic or work or friendship relationships. The truth is, narcissists are everywhere. They aren’t going away. And to a certain extent, we can all be a little narcissistic sometimes. This is natural and normal. We all have egos. And this is why NPD is considered a spectrum disorder — because everyone who falls into that category falls differently on the spectrum, and it varies greatly how much that person’s tendencies impact their lives and the people around them.
The Trauma Bond
In case you’ve never heard of it, the trauma bond occurs during abuse (narcissistic or otherwise; physical or emotional) where it is possible to feel deeply connected to the person who is treating you badly.
It can also refer to a situation in which you experience a traumatic situation along with someone else — for example, soldiers in war. These experiences can create very strong social bonds that are hard to break. This is a natural and normal function of trauma bonding.
Where trauma bonding goes wrong is when another person uses pain in order to manipulate another person into bonding with them. Or when it is even unintentional, but can occur during the commission of a crime.
One well-known form of this is Stockholm syndrome. Named for an actual event that occurred when four hostages were taken during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, it describes what happens when captives psychologically identify and bond with their captors. Despite how nonsensical it may look from the outside, it is actually a survival strategy. And it is a trauma bond.
Most people know of the “fight or flight response,” and more and more people seem to be learning that there are really four Fs: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.
“Fawn” could also be sexual and could be written as another “f” word. But I like “fawn” because it describes ingratiating behavior that is not necessarily sexual in nature. It may be proto-sexual or para-sexual. And it certainly can be, and often is sexual, in many cases.
This very practical survival response — fawning on your captors, treating them with admiration and respect to (hopefully) win their approval, so that they won’t, you know, kill you or hurt you badly, or to even go so far as turning them and/or seducing them, can morph into a very real feeling of admiration, trust, and even love — bonding. This psychological event is often compounded by these captors providing random acts of kindness, such as offering a glass of water. Yes, they may be holding several people at gunpoint, but by offering something needed and desired in the situation of danger, they confuse the sensibilities. They are cruel, but also kind. They appear more human, more vulnerable. As the captive person, you will want to see the good in them, and respond to this kindness, even while that gun is trained on you, and you might even start to make excuses for them in your mind; “They are only doing this because they have to. They don’t really mean it.”
“They don’t really mean it…”
In the actual Stockholm event of 1973, after the four hostages were rescued, rather than feeling relief at being, they felt affinity for their captors, and fear of the police who came to get them.
This is the power of the trauma bond.
“I would never do that”
You might think to yourself, “That would never be me. If I were in that situation, it would be totally different.” But how do you know, really? How can you be sure? You have the same basic equipment — brains, fear, intelligence, a sense of self-preservation, bonding hormones. These are the prerequisites to living a normal, healthy life. But they also make it possible to develop a Trauma Bond with someone who is simultaneously hurting you. How do you know that you would fight or flee, and not fawn? You might.
And this doesn’t take place only in large-scale public crimes where people are abducted or imprisoned or held hostage. It can take place in everyday life. It is the reason that a battered wife, or man, will go back to, stay with, and even defend the spouse or partner that is physically harming them. From outside of that situation, it seems nonsensical. But for those inside it, it is their best coping strategy. It may be the only way that they can psychologically survive. And in this way, they keep themselves in the middle of the abuse, rather than move away from it.
But it is important to remember that it is NOT their fault. The captor or the abuser knows exactly what this person is going through. They know exactly how much fear to exploit. They know their capacity for love and compassion, and so they give them just enough kindness to keep them from leaving — and hurt them just enough so that they will feel even worse about themselves if they do leave. They capitalize on their guilt, their shame, their love. And while they understand these emotions in others, typically speaking, they do not experience them in the same way. This is how they are able to be so calculating. And this is what puts many if not most of these types of people into the narcissistic or sociopathic personality spectrum. They may be sociopaths or psychopaths, or the hybrid term, “Narcopath.”
Yes, Even Women
And while our minds might automatically assign a male persona to the NPD or sociopathic individual, these can just as likely be women. I have met several in my life.
Sometimes I wonder to myself, “Is this me? Am I actually a narcissist, and don’t know it?” It’s helpful to remember that all of us can be narcissistic *at times*. It’s part of the human condition. But is a different bag of worms from being a narcissistic personality individual all the time. For one thing, a true narcissist will never question whether they are a narcissist — the very idea is anathema to them, and they are incapable of considering it. And if you’ve ever tried to tell an NPD person that they are narcissistic — well, you can guess how well that goes. (Not well.)
Anytime anyone has ever called me “selfish,” I’ve practically spun out of control, doing everything I can to understand why they said that, what about me was so selfish, and what can I do to own up to it, apologize, and earn forgiveness? But no. None of those things can be done. Because what I’ve realized after each time this has happened is that the person making the accusation was themselves behaving selfishly. And in fact, they must have known on some level that I tend to actively try to not be selfish, and so they identified this as a weak spot and crafted this little “dig” to hurt me in a specific way that they know would cause me to question myself. And it *worked* — for a while, anyway. I am not as susceptible now.
Those techniques are all part of gaslighting, a thing that narcissistic abusers do frequently. While putting me into a tailspin where I am ripping myself apart thinking that I am the selfish one, they mosey off, unscathed, never having to take responsibility for their actions or behaviors. And by the time I understand what’s happened, the moment has passed.
It’s not all bad
But then I had another thought about Trauma Bonds. They are not all bad. They can’t be. Like with soldiers in the field, or even something more light-hearted like a camping adventure with friends. Shared experiences, including very intense ones, are part of what solidify our personal connections.
So I thought of what must be the original trauma bond: birth. The process of birth is inherently traumatic for both the mother and the baby. No one emerges from that experience uninjured, unscathed, untransformed. Yet it is the ultimate bond. It is the height of oxytocin release. No matter what kind of mother you have, or if you never see her again, it is a permanent bond.
And that is how whatever is responsible for this Universe and our evolution within it has created us. Yes, intense pleasure, like an orgasm, will bond us to others. That much seems obvious. But perhaps counterintuitively, our deepest bonding can come through the kind of pain and trauma that rends us, that tears us apart, that thrusts us into breathing, gasping for air; that changes us in such a way that we can never be the same.
It is healthy, it is natural and it is normal. But beware of those who would use this power to benefit themselves while letting you pay the emotional and perhaps even physical price for that connection. In that scenario, you would be better served by connecting with yourself.
