Today, we're going to be talking about trauma bonds and some of the things we will hear ourselves saying to ourselves when we are in a trauma bonded situation with someone like a narcissist.

So let's break down what a trauma bond is.

So if you have a trauma bond with an abusive person, then you have been experiencing intermittent reinforcement.

So one day things are really good and the next day, things are really bad.

Or you have a period of things being really awesome and the person you're dealing with reinforces

you.

There's this positive reinforcement.

There's positive validation.

You're praised on one day.

But then in the periods of your relationship, when it gets really dark, things get

really sour and sometimes very, very quickly and sometimes very dark.

And what happens is you don't even realize that you're being pulled into an abusive cycle. And so it's important that you recognize

that there's this intermittent validation or inconsistent validation over time. And so what's

happening? What's happening is you're being primed to seek

validation and you're also being primed to fear a negative outcome. This is what I call the

codependent hamster's wheel. So what happens in an abusive relationship is that there are two things

that are going on primarily. A, you seek

validation and this is where you're getting your sense of pleasure from, right? So your mind is

being primed to think it's good to get validation. So you're associating pleasure with that.

But on the flip side of that, you're associating pain with a negative outcome. And so if you're dealing

with someone who's abusive, you are at the same time being primed to seek their validation,

good boy, good girl. And at the same time, you're being primed or brainwashed to fear the outcome

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