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Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spike and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast.

It is so great to have you here back for another episode. I just want to let

you know before we get into this episode that we are going to be discussing some intense

subject matter today to do with physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, that sort of thing.

So if that is something that you're particularly sensitive to or you

don't really want to hear somebody talking about today, just giving you a heads up so you can

skip this episode or maybe come back to it at a later time when you are feeling, you know,

maybe in a more stable place. There will be some links to some resources and some assistance in the show description as well.

Let's get into it.

Today, we are talking about trauma bonds.

And no, not to people who bond through hardship because I hate to break it to you.

That is actually not a trauma bond.

We are talking about

a powerful kind of connection that forms between two people when one person manipulates their

own trauma or the trauma of the person that they are with to create a highly dependent, highly painful, highly manipulative relationship that

is founded on the highs and lows of emotional gaslighting, maybe even emotional abuse,

founded on hot and cold behavior, founded on betrayal and hurt rather than love. What nobody tells you about trauma bonds

is how often people who think they would never be susceptible to this kind of thing

end up in these relationships all of the time because of how powerful inconsistency is

at hijacking our brain's reward system. When somebody gives you the most

...