Welcome to the Emancipate Your Mind podcast.

I'm your host, certified religious transition and trauma recovery coach, Terry Hales.

I help people step out of the shadows of religious fear and shame and embrace their

authentic selves with love and empathy.

If you're ready to throw off the shackles of learned binary thinking and explore

a more nuanced approach to life, this is your playground.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Emancipate Your Mind podcast. Today I wanted to talk about a term that has been floating around in the deconstruction community, at least for the past six years since I joined it. I'm sure you've heard the term too. It's trauma bonding. Sometimes the term is used to talk about the addictive quality between a person healing from abuse

and the person that perpetuated the abuse, such as a parent, a church leader, or a romantic partner.

But other times, the term is used to talk about the almost instantaneous bond that can occur between

survivors of abuse as they share their experiences with one another.

And I thought the term trauma bonding was accurate for both of these phenomena.

But it turns out I was wrong.

There's a difference between trauma bonding, which is that emotional connection we were talking about between an abused person and their

abuser and bonding over trauma, which is the almost instant feeling of closeness and being

understood that happens when two people have experienced the same kind of trauma.

Today we're going to talk about trauma bonding specifically so you can understand what

the cycle looks like, what leads us to engage in these patterns, and how we can begin to break

free if we find ourselves still in relationships where attachment and pain are mixed.

Next week, we'll talk about the experience many of us have had while bonding over shared

trauma and the benefits as well as the possible pitfalls that can come from the instabonding

that happens in recovery communities and how you can keep yourself healthy and safe as you

continue to heal. Trauma bonding can look like any of these scenarios from Syc Central in case

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