When You Can't Leave or Stay: How to Recognize a Trauma Bond

There comes a point when you know you need to leave, but you can’t. The connection with your loved one is too powerful.

In this episode, Rossana Faye joins me to discuss the signs and symptoms of a late-stage trauma bond.

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., a mental health specialist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships, deconstructing narcissism, and understanding various other mental health-related issues. Her memoir, Love You More: The Harrowing Tale of Lies, Sex Addiction, & Double Cross, gives an uncensored glimpse into the dynamics of narcissistic abuse.

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Transcript

Ep. 89 When You Can't Leave or Stay: How to Recognize a Trauma Bond

Kerry: [00:00:00] There are many stages to trauma bonds, but one of the last stages is when you feel defeated and you've given up. In this episode, Rosanna Faye joins me to talk about what this experience is like and how to recognize if it's happening to you.

Trauma bonds. It's been something that I've only recently learned about since getting out of that toxic relationship, and I now know that there are stages to it. One of the stages we don't talk a lot about is the late stage of trauma bond, in which there's depression, submission, and maybe even surrender. Do you think you were trauma bonded in that toxic marriage?

Ro: This is tough for me because I deal with a lot of clients who are experiencing trauma bonds, and I would equate it to having an addiction to a substance. It is this—you really wanna, you really wanna quit, but you can't, [00:01:00] there's something pulling you in, and you will use again, and you will relapse, and you'll go back, and be hoovered back. I didn't experience that with my ex.

The second I needed out, the second I knew I had to leave, there was no turning back, there was no hoovering me back, there was no, "I could just get one more fix," you know? So, this equating it to an addiction, I look more like maybe he had a trauma bond with me; he couldn't let me go. And, for thinking late-stage trauma bond, I would say that maybe the last plea of keeping me for two more years, part of maybe a mild trauma bond I had with him, kept me there.

It wasn't so much a trauma bond. It was more...well, yeah, it was a trauma bond. It was I needed to keep things safe for me, and I just kind of gave up. It was a bit of a surrender. So when you said "surrender," that really hit me, that resonated with me. But when we're thinking about just "I can't leave this person," [00:02:00] I didn't really feel that. The second I knew I had to leave, it was gone for me. So I know it was very different for you.

Kerry: Yeah, well, sort of and sort of not. I get uncomfortable calling a trauma bond like an addiction. I think that it feels like an addiction. I think that there, yeah. For some people, there can be a pull for a repetition, a repetitiveness to the relationship because of, or a fear of abandonment, a fear of letting go.

And so they, because they're not ready, they then continue to pursue the relationship. Or even because they have such a need for acceptance, they continue to be vulnerable to being hoovered back into the relationship. But I do think that we can have a trauma bond without being tempted to go back.

Ro: Okay, yeah.

Kerry: Once my relationship was over, it was over. Yeah, I did return in the middle of it, but I returned because I wasn't ready for it to be over. I wasn't psychologically at the same spot. So, when I was one year in and he said, "I want a divorce," I didn't really want a divorce. I wanted him to still love me.

So when he [00:03:00] said he was interested in working on it again, yeah, I also had financial issues and reasons and legal issues that were compelling me to come back. But I also had never stopped loving him. But when, at the end of the relationship, he left me the way he left me, and I now knew what had gone on behind my back, I was done.

I didn't want this person back. I knew that he was a liar, a cheater, he was an awful person, and I was finished. Now, would it have felt good to have him say that he loved me and wanted me? Sure. I would have loved to have had the upper hand, but it wasn't because I really wanted the return of the relationship. I couldn't see how he could pull out of that because now I knew this person had scammed me.

So I just, you know, can see some things when you see it. That's how I felt. You know, I'd really seen the truth. I would say yes, I still had a significant trauma bond. Enough so—here's how I knew—enough so that when, if he texted me, my heart pounded. And I felt a lot of reaction. Maybe it was fear; [00:04:00] I wasn't sure what to say.

His opinion mattered a lot to me. So he had a lot of power to affect me, even though I didn't want him to. And yeah, I wouldn't have said, "Yeah, let's get back together," but I didn't want him to have that kind of power over me, so that bothered me to see myself so vulnerable to this person, and to their view of life, and their view of me. But I would say, being out of a trauma bond today, I don't have any of that, so if he was to say that to me, I'd be like, "Yeah, I don't like anyone saying this about me," but to have him say it doesn't carry any extra weight.

I would just say, "Oh, he's an asshole." I would just sort of like, whatever. Who cares? I don't care. So, I wouldn't like it, but I wouldn't have that same like, "Oh, I can't breathe" feeling that I would have had when I was in the middle of that relationship. So, yeah, I do, I know I had one. I had had one before. I had had another one.

In fact, when mine with him broke, it broke all of them. I had had one with my mom. I had a lot of fear about her, and what might happen to her, and [00:05:00] if we could get disconnected, and I just felt very attached to her, and very needy of a good opinion from her, and very dependent on her. It broke with him; it broke with her.

Yeah, I care about how she feels; it matters to me, but I feel like my identity now is separate from her. And so even if she disapproves of me, it doesn't feel good, but it's not catastrophic like it once felt. It used to feel really, really bad. It doesn't feel bad today. So I just feel like I'm a separate individual that exists outside these relationships, whereas before I felt like my sense of self was dependent on how healthy or unhealthy or what was happening in these relationships.

I hope that makes sense.

Ro: It does. Yeah. It kind of ties into the attachment part. So when you asked if I had a trauma bond with my ex-husband and I didn't believe I did, but with really thinking back. There was a period where we were together for five years, and then we had broken up, and it was so long ago, I don't remember exactly why we broke up, but a lot of it had to do with his addictions and drinking, and the way he [00:06:00] was treating me, and it was pretty awful.

He hoovered me back, and I married him, and I think I married him because I was trauma bonded to him. I think when I was 30, or however old I was, 27, and I got back, he wrote me this letter, it was bullet-pointed, there was a table of contents with, he even had 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, like I taught him how to write proposals because that's what I used to do in a previous job.

And so he, he was kind of a, a bit of a, a little, like a nod to me and what I'd given him, right? The ability to write proposals because that was my job. Right. So, he wrote this letter to me in a form of a proposal—not a proposal because he actually proposed only six months later—but still it was a, it was a way to get me back.

Kerry: Yeah, it was like a make, to make a point, like it convinced you, like in a—not an argument, but I mean literally like he was arguing for a point.

Ro: Yeah, he was proposing we get back together. It had all the elements of our relationship, and I was in a relationship [00:07:00] already. And he pulled me out of that relationship.

That was the power of the trauma bond. That was, I needed to be back. I needed to feel attached to him because I felt like this letter was attached to how he felt about me, and it was much more of a meaningful feeling than the other guy that was actually a really perfectly healthy relationship. He pulled me out of that and I do believe now, thinking back, when you talk about how we need that attachment, we need to feel like we're not ready to quite let that go, that there were some loose ends.

He was pointing them out in the letter. And I was on a trip to the Dominican, actually, with my boyfriend at the time, and he wrote me this letter, and I read it the day before I left. And I had this, the words were in my head on this trip with this really wonderful man. And this man actually was trying to ask me to marry him, and I remember the day he had a ring in his pocket, and he was about to pull it out, and I immediately got sick. I was like sick from the food or maybe I just had a physical reaction. I was getting sick all the ways, and we had to [00:08:00] go back to the hotel room, and it was in that moment I said, "I think I need to go back to my ex-boyfriend." At the time, he was my ex-boyfriend. And so I dumped this guy, went back with my ex, and we got married. And even on my wedding day—and you know the story with the cake.

Kerry: Yeah.

Ro: Even on my wedding day, there was an element of danger where he had taken chunks out of the cake and shoved it up my nose.

And he was using during the wedding, and he was, he was off, and it was just, it was awful. And I still, I didn't know. The trauma bond was so strong that it kept me connected to him and married for seven more years. When there was a part of me that just knew this wasn't right, like I left the first time.

And it was that strong, he got a ring on my finger.

Kerry: Yeah, yeah.

Ro: So I definitely was.

Kerry: That's why when you said, "I don't think I had one," I liked your story. You know the whole story. But you did have one because you wouldn't have stayed so long.

Ro: I wouldn't have.

Kerry: The rational Ro is just not like that. So, let's talk [00:09:00] about how it really submerges your identity.

I felt that. I had seen myself shifting. Let me quickly just review the stages, and I know I'm not gonna, if I'm doing this off the top of my head, I'm gonna miss some, but the initial stage obviously is love bombing. Then there's an introduction of careful criticisms, all done in light to help you, but it then becomes eventually just critical.

Gaslighting starts to get implemented. At that point, you start to feel confused. And you start to submit to their reality, their view of the reality. Then you start to feel really depressed, and you eventually just give in and give up. You submit, ultimately, to the experience and get very, very depressed, and that's sort of considered the addicted level, when you feel like you can't get out.

You know it's not good for you, but you need them so much, and your sense of self is dependent on them so much, because they made you dependent on them that you just don't feel like you can break free. When you get to those last stages—and this is what happened to me—I started to feel like death was more preferable to life.

I knew that I was in a really bad position, [00:10:00] and that I needed to get out, but I couldn't see a way out because people are like, "Well, but you just, right there is the door, just get out." But no, most people don't understand is that they've made it impossible to leave. They're either messing with your finances—

So you maybe have no finances, no way, no independence, no money. And in fact, I just heard somebody said that it took them nearly 10 years to save up enough money to leave. And that's, that's how broke they were. So they somehow incapacitate the option. So it's, you're not independent. You're not a free person to do that, but they also then make you feel dependent on them psychologically.

So you don't feel free there either; you feel like you need their approval, like somehow it's dangled as a possible carrot that you could actually be reached but it is never given to you. But instead, you end up getting the punishment, not the reward. And then there's also another piece in which they've undermined your sense of self so sufficiently over the time and that you've betrayed yourself enough.

You no longer have faith in yourself anymore. [00:11:00] You're not for sure you can do it. So you feel a helplessness within yourself. Like I don't know if I can manage this. I definitely remember feeling that. I remember I was living in Mexico without a full command. I wasn't fluent. So how am I going to supposed to go get my prescriptions?

How am I supposed to conduct business?

Ro: Yes.

Kerry: All these things I didn't know how to do, and I felt like I needed this person in order to sort of survive this environment. And they put you in these situations, I think, sometimes on purpose to keep the level of dependence so high. So I got to the place where, okay, he's going to take half of the money that the company's worth, which means that I'm going to have to go back to work.

I don't want to do that. I feel too old and tired and burnt out of what I was doing before. I'm in a country that I can't have the command of the language, so I don't know what I'm going to do to navigate reasonably and continue to have business here. And on top of it, this person scares me and I think there's a potential threat of violence here, so he might harm me if I leave.

If I really offend him and take him on in a powerful way where he [00:12:00] feels like I've emasculated him, there may be retaliation for that. So I don't want that either. So I just felt like all my options are blocked. And then I didn't have the kind of resources or people in my life in that area that could take me in.

Like who's going to take me in? So it's, I just felt stuck. So then when I felt stuck, I started feeling like, well, maybe if I just wasn't here, maybe that would solve all of this. It was at least a solution. I wouldn't have to think about how to get out. I wouldn't need to get out. I wouldn't be here. It was a horrible place to get. Years ago—and I know that I usually don't talk about faith issues here, but years ago I had read about, um, because I'm a Christian and there was a passage of Beatitudes, it says, "Blessed is the poor in spirit, for they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven," and I've never understood what that meant. And I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, The Cost of Discipleship, but he described it as spiritual poverty. And he said, it's when you reach a place of helplessness where you know, if there is not immediate intervention, you will die.

[00:13:00] Like if you were on your last, you've gone without food and water so long that you know you're within hours of your death. You, without immediate intervention, you will die. That's the level of powerless and helplessness. And I remember in that relationship, getting there and saying, I can't get out. I cannot get out.

I cannot see a way out. I cannot save myself. Maybe it doesn't matter. Not that I wasn't worth saving. I never thought that. But, maybe we just didn't need saving. You know, did you ever get there yourself?

Ro: I did. It was a desolate, dark place. And, my personality is, "Well, think of the good things. Be positive." But now, looking back, sitting in front of myself in the mirror, there would be mornings where I would look at myself, and I would just look in the mirror and say, "This is your life." It was almost like my positive spin on, "You're stuck here. You can't leave."

Kerry: Make the best of it, girl. It's your life.

Ro: Make the best of it. You've chosen this. And there was this, like, I needed to be responsible for this. And, 'cause he would say, [00:14:00] this rung in my head so many times during the end. He would say, "Look at yourself. Just look at yourself, honey. Look at you. Look what you're doing. Look at you." He would say that. It was a very triggering, repetitive comment he would always say to me whenever I would speak up for myself, or if we would argue, he'd look at you, look at you, and he'd have that snarl in his face.

And so I did. I looked in the mirror, and I looked at me, and I would say, "This is your life. You've chosen this man. You have these kids, this is your home, this is your bathroom, this is your toothbrush," I mean I would go through these things as part of my OCD, I would go through these things as a calming technique, and I would try to cope and ground myself in an anxious moment, and I would say, "And this is your life. This is your shirt. This is you. You've chosen this."

And it was almost like a euphemism for "You're stuck here. You're never gonna leave." That was a dark place for me, looking back. I didn't really want to acknowledge how dark it was, and maybe I didn't want to admit it, or I was blind to [00:15:00] it. But I look back, and that was really dark. My eyes were sunken in. I looked really, very pale.

There were moments where I would sit on the floor after cleaning up the kids' toys, and I would just stare into space. And I don't think I had ideation. But I would look at this banister that was in front of my door, and I would think, just picture myself, "What if I was there right now and he walked in, and I was gone?"

What would he think? How would he respond? "Oh, no, mom's gone." Like, how would, how would, what would that be like for my family? For my kids? What if I was just wasn't here? Would I see this? Would I witness the reaction, or would I just be it—black—gone?

Kerry: Yeah.

Ro: So, maybe that was my way of thinking. Maybe that's a better way out than I'm stuck here. But that space that I was in was really dark. And it was really—that wasn't me. And I look back, and I'm really sad for that woman. I'm really sad for the old Ro that was there making the best of it in the mirror with my affirmations, which I thought were affirmations, but [00:16:00] really it was just me resigning and just me just surrendering and giving in to, "This is what I chose." And it was sad that I couldn't see a way out.

Kerry: So how did you get to the place where you started to get out? I know for me, so again, this is what I normally do. I lean into my spiritual self. So I started to pray. I started to say, "I am helpless. I can't get out. I don't know what to do to get out. I need help. I can't get out." And, and I really had a faith that I believe that God, or whoever, however you want to label that entity, cared and was there.

And I started to sort of see this as a partnership. Like I believed that there would be a moment that out would be possible. I need to do my part and be obedient and take the moment when it happened. So I thought like—I mean, that's what I did. I started to get psychologically ready. Now, I didn't need to do other things.

Yeah, I actually did do it. I take that back. I did do other things. I started to work legally, you know. I started to talk to an attorney on the side and getting the paperwork in the position so [00:17:00] that when the out happened, I would be in a position to pull the trigger and make it happen. I would get us into the attorney's office, change the company policy, change the company ownership so that I became the full owner.

So I started to prepare, even though I didn't know how I was going to get him into the office, because I trusted that I would, that it would happen. But I was going to get my piece ready, and I psychologically got ready to know that when it happened, I was going to take the opportunity. Whatever it looked like, I was going to do that.

And I also then kind of leaned into my spiritual self. So that's how I did it. So how did you do it?

Ro: I think you brought something up that I didn't even realize until right now, which was I did pray, but I wasn't praying for an opportunity, but an opportunity did find me. I was just praying for peace.

I was just praying maybe he would change. I would pray for him. I would, I would ask God to change him to be better, to make this life better. Because if I chose it and I'm here, then I might as well make the best of it. But [00:18:00] if he could be better, it would even be better.

Yeah, it would just like benefit the whole gang. But an opportunity did happen. We had a huge fight, and in a drunken state, I went and downloaded match dot com. I already got on the website. I couldn't figure out the other dating apps. Tinder. Bumble. He said something to me that stuck with me in that night. He said, "You will never forget. No one's ever gonna want you. No one's ever gonna want a washed-up, almost 40-year-old, mom of three, divorced." And I said, "Okay, sure," and I went to bed, and I downloaded this app, or this, you know, dating site, and I attached it to my Facebook page. So I had my Facebook picture, and it said "separated." I put "separated," because I didn't know what else to put.

So I put "separated," and woke up the next day to 87 messages. I was mortified. I'm a married woman at this point, right? So I'm mortified. I'm like, oh my goodness. I wake up in this sober light, I'm like, what did I do last night? Really, in that state, I was [00:19:00] thinking of proving to him. "Yeah? And no one's going to want me? Okay. Someone's going to want me." So I deleted the app. I deleted the emails. I deleted it all. I was on for maybe eight hours total. I went to go work for 30 hours as a doula. Came home, and he was there. He had found out about this and approached me at night, like ripped the sheets off the bed, took the pillow out from under me after I had showered and gone to bed. It's 3 in the morning, and he was like, "When are you gonna ever tell me? Were you gonna tell me that you're having an affair? You're having an affair? How are you gonna do this to us?" And we fought for three hours and woke up the next day, and he's still yelling at me. I'm cooking breakfast for the kids, preparing their lunches. There are carpet cleaners coming to the house to clean the carpets.

He's still yelling in front of them. They were so, so uncomfortable.

Kerry: Oh, I bet they were.

Ro: Oh, they're like, "Should we leave? Do we need to get out of here?" I'm like, "No." And he would say, "Oh, my wife is just a..." you know, he'd say all these, "She's a liar. She's a cheater." He would be—he was doing [00:20:00] this, and I was crying. And then that evening, I left to go get my nails done, and he called me on the van phone, and it popped up, and he was so sweet and so nice, and he goes, "I'm so sorry about what happened today. You had a really tough day, didn't you? Well, I just wanted to let you know, eight months ago, I hired an escort, and you know, I never went through with it because she never showed up, so I—but I got robbed. We got robbed, honey. We got robbed for $650. Isn't that awful? But anyways, I just wanted to let you know, I do, I do bad things too. So don't feel bad about your match.com thing because I do bad things too."

Kerry: Wow.

Ro: That was the moment where I'm like, this is what I married. I can get out. I have power here. This is not, I'm like, he called me, not to apologize, but to admit that he hired an escort in our marriage. That was it for me. There was proof now.

He said it; he admitted it. [00:21:00] And that was, I almost wished that I could catch him red-handed doing something, acting out in the marriage, and it would be an excuse to divorce him. It would be not just "I'm unhappy," but "you've done something." So now he's admitted to something, and that was my way out.

There was no turning back from that moment. I immediately took my rings off in that moment, and there was no turning back. But that's what broke me free of it—was the opportunity that I didn't know I was praying for. And it was right there. Eight hours. I was on this website for eight hours. And in eight hours, he found me.

Kerry: Yeah, think about that. Think about what that means.

Ro: Geez, if I...he was on it, number one.

Kerry: I know.

Ro: But also, if I hadn't done that, how long would I have gone for? If he hadn't found me on there, how long would I have gone for, you know? If we didn't have that fight? You know, there's just a lot of things. That was the key thing that took me out of that marriage, and I found that that [00:22:00] was an opportunity that was given to me, and I took it. I jumped on it, and that was the moment where I knew it was, it was done, and there was no turning back. So I'm so grateful for that moment. And it wasn't something I did. It was just elements and just things that just came together so beautifully for me to have that strength to really break that bond.

Kerry: Right. Right. I agree. And that's how it worked for me as well. What I'd like to do is let's jump over to the podcast extra and talk about if you're feeling like you want to resign. You're just, you're giving in, giving up, throwing in the weight, you're throwing in the towel, maybe flying the white flag.

Let's talk about what you can do to get enough strength back to save yourself, because unfortunately, it does come to that. We have to—I think life does often offer us opportunities, but we also, at the same time, have to cooperate with those opportunities. That's what I see repeatedly is people get [00:23:00] helpless, and then they want somebody to pull them out of the helplessness.

And unfortunately, nobody has that kind of power to do that for you. I mean, I wish I could, I'd like to, but we have to find it within ourselves. So let's talk about on the podcast extra, exactly how to do that. And thank you so much for joining me today, talking about this very difficult topic. Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode.

Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? Find me at Kerry McAvoy Ph.D. And whether you're in, considering leaving, or have left a narcissistic relationship, find community support at my Toxic-Free Relationship Club. You can learn about this resource as well as others at KerryMcAvoyPhD.com, and I'll see you back here next week.