How to break the spell of a trauma bond in 6 steps
I was married to a sociopath and was abused for 2 decades and this is how I got to know all about the trauma bonding process but more than that how to break free from it. My life transformed very quickly but I had to create a plan to do this.In this video I am going to share with you the steps I took to break the spell and the trauma bond of abuse.
I hope it will help you as quickly as it helped me.
Hello I’m Sarah and I’m a clinical hypnotherapist and relationship coach. I’m a survivor and thriver of narcissistic abuse myself and I help people attract great relationships and learn to create a happy life after trauma.
I remember this time of my life vividly. The moments, days and weeks after I had realised that I had been experiencing abuse from a sociopathic ex. It was certainly a living nightmare but at some level, I realised that this was also the moment where I could actually learn to be happy. It was weirdly liberating.
Looking back I believe I was divinely guided.
One day when I had just about as much as I could take of the stress and trauma of suddenly finding out about a secret scam that my ex had been involved in. It is not an exaggeration to say that I really had enough of what I was able to endure. I was very close to not living at all.
In a quiet moment, I felt life just stop and it was like it became suspended. I felt a wave of peace and calm and I felt a lot of spaciousness. It felt so safe. In fact, I felt safer than I ever had done in my whole life. Recalling that moment now is making feel so much appreciation and gratitude. Because it was in this moment that I heard a voice talking to me. It was a very clear gentle voice. I’m not even sure I know who the voice belonged to.
And it said to me ‘Sarah you are not meant to be living like this. You are meant to be happy in this lifetime.’ and then I just sat there enjoying the sensation of peace, calm and relief. I let these feeling wash over me.
What had just happened?
Maybe it was my imagination?
Looking back and thinking about those times I believe I was being guided by a higher power. Maybe my soul
Maybe my inner being
Maybe my soul guides or angels,
maybe God.
Before this experience, I would not have described myself as spiritual at all but I certainly do now
After this moment my life just changed.
Things I needed to know?
Information came to me.
Professional support came to me.
The sociopath got removed from my life overnight.
With a restraining order just to make sure
I got a lovely house to live in when I left
I got a new car.
I got a new job
It sounds easy, but the changes happened very fast and it took some work and focus to get through it nonetheless.
But going back to that moment of deep knowing. A few things happened that helped me break my trauma bond to the abuser.
I’m writing down/ talking about the exact steps that I took to get the break I needed because I hope it will help you also make that break. I honestly believe everything happens for a reason and so I want to document what happened to me in these early stages of separation from the sociopathic narcissist so that it can be replicated by anyone else who also needs this support. One thing I did learn that is if you are open to support from life, then support comes to you if you can somehow trust the process.
I know that this is a big ask because our trust has been broken so many times over and over. I’m not prescribing here so these are just the steps I took. Everybody is on their individual journey but if this content resonates then do with it what you will.
So back to the process. Here is the first thing that happened and the other steps flowed naturally from this first one.
Create distance and stop reacting
The feeling I got when I heard my guidance was so good. It felt so safe and I was able to feel what it was like to be in a calm place. I wanted to keep replicating it. I needed to feel safe and calm more than anything else. What I discovered was that I could replicate this feeling every day just by simply meditating! I just didn’t know what it was called at the time although it didn’t take me long to find out. I became fascinated with the process and was eager to learn all about it. I booked into my local Buddhist sanctuary so I could learn to do it properly. Although I realised later I had been actually doing it properly to begin with! Looking back now this process actually saved my life. I was able to create some kind of emotional distance from the abuser, I was still living with him at the time, and I was also able to stop reacting to all of his manipulations. It was actually a very sudden difference. He realised that I was ‘different’ and that really spooked him.
Maybe you have experienced something similar? But when an abuser ‘knows’ their victim is becoming aware, that’s when things can get very dangerous in an abusive relationship.The perpetrator can’t stand losing control over their long-term victim. They panic and become even more manipulative. They will probably appear ‘fine’ on the surface only to be working on some other strategy beneath. After a period of time of being unable to bait me or get me to react, the abuser went into a tailspin which after a few weeks, he started acting out and became violent and the smear campaigns were vamped up. This is when I required help from the police. It was horrible at the time but looking back it was just life bringing me the support I so desperately needed. I felt looked after and I wouldn’t have made it out alive without them.
So creating emotional distance now also meant creating physical distance. This is an absolute requirement for creating your transformation. Eventually, I attained full no contact. Because what I learned that physical distance is not enough. Emotional distance has to be total. I continued to work on creating emotional distance for quite a while after this. Through meditation practise I learned to understand the power of being present in the moment. When I realised this, it was a powerful tool I could use over and over again in my recovery and transformation. Your reactions to their abuses are merely ‘feeding’ the monster and once you understand this your recovery and transformation will be assured. It’s also an important practise for creating boundaries ( see my other video content about this)
Self Care and Self Love
Early on in this experience, I didn’t realise how important self-care and developing self love was going to be. I basically had no idea about self care and I certainly had no idea how to love myself. The only model I had for self love was that of the narcissist and I didn’t want to be like that. Over time I got to know what this was all really about. One thing I did understand was that I had to now start acting in my own best interests and quick. For decades, I had put the needs of somebody else before my own and that now had to stop. And I realised quickly that I also had to do this so my children didn’t get more traumatised. I understood the story of the plane crash. When you’re in a crash, who has to put their oxygen mask on first? You or your children? A kind soul was able to point this out to me. I got it straight away. Yes I was in an emergency situation. In fact, I was in ground zero and in full survival mode. This understanding got me focused.
Acknowledge the abuse
This was so hard and when I realised, it was like I was hit by a tsunami of realisation that I had been in a living nightmare. But I was waking up. It does take a lot of processing (and if you follow my other video content, I will explain more about how I processed my emotional triggers relating to all of this) But this work is necessary for your transformation. At the time, I was just in survival mode and was on a very steep learning curve. I went down the online rabbit hole of narcissistic abuse and basically all the tick boxes of abuse were checked.
I came back out of that rabbit hole - this is really important for your transformation, as it was for mine. Don’t stay in these spaces if you want to transform beyond narcissistic abuse. Knowing about them isn’t enough to save you from them. What I realised was that however sadistic, cruel, and appalling this person's behaviour had been toward me, just like the oxygen mask, I had to keep the focus on me if I were to stand any chance of getting out of this experience and getting some kind of quality of life back.
What did come out of this was that I was able to make a decision about what I wanted my life to be like. I remember the voice telling me I was supposed to be happy in this lifetime. When you know what you don’t want you actually know what you do want. I reflected deeply on this and turned every abuse that I had endured into the ‘opposite’ which helped me decide what I wanted my life to be like.
I realised also that there was hardly anybody in my circle who was going to ‘get’ what had been happening to me. What I did realise was that nobody else could do this work for me. It had to be me acting for me.
Get support
Life was sending me support in the most dramatic and effective of ways. I had police and social services interventions and was also granted a restraining order to protect me from the ex. So I was able to build a new life in relative safety. What I knew was that my ‘support system’ consisted of mutual friends and a shared social circle. I had very few family or friends to call on. The sociopath had been creating the inevitable smear campaigns with our social circle and I didn’t want anything to do with them anyway, I quickly realised. So I called in support from knowledgeable professional people to help me. I didn’t want particularly to burden anyone else with it all and also i realised that most people would not be able to get the enormity of what had been happening. So for your transformation you could also build an expert support system. I did receive counselling and specialist support for a short while, which was helpful. But I also looked online to see what was available there and found some extremely helpful resources and healing systems and a great support group.
Get an emotional toolkit together
I already had meditation and I learned to practise mindfulness as taught by thich naht hahn. This helped me become much more resilient, compassionate and less reactive. I also learned about trauma processing tools such as Emotional Freedom Technique, Inner child work and Theta healings There are many more trauma processing tools and processes out there. Choose which ones resonate with you. So I was able to process my trauma and my emotional triggers. I still do this work every day. It was vital for me in those early survival days, but now I’m more in a maintenance mode but still do my ‘healings’ and meditation. Have something that you can use on yourself. Acknowledge your emotional triggers and have something in place to manage and process them whenever they come up.
Understand how the trauma bond works.
Understand the physiology of the hormones that are released in your body which form the trauma bond and their effects on you. It is a physical, hormonal reaction that creates emotional connections to the abuser. In much the same way that crack creates a strong connection for the crackhead.
Yes, it’s an addiction. It’s not love.
We think we are in love but the chemical hormones that are produced in our body have been conditioned to make us feel like that. In the same way that a crack addict loves crack. The trauma bond is the basis of the abuse cycle. I will leave some links to video content that explain the trauma bond and abuse cycle in much more detail below.
If we can develop an awareness of what is going on for us at this level, it really does help to manage what is happening to us emotionally and physically.
I think the whole point of this experience is to create massive self awareness and it is the basis of personal transformation and evolution. I’m just relieved that I have been able to break the cycle of narcissistic abuse, not just for me but for my children.
I hope you find the steps that I used helpful, they certainly helped me get empowered after all the hurt and are the building blocks that have helped me to get a fantastic life and create great relationships and I hope they will help you to do the same
If you would like to know more about how to work with me then click any of the links below and if you would like some expert support and a safe space to heal, then why not consider joining my Facebook group. It’s private and it’s free and most of all it’s safe.