In a trauma bond or in these more chaotic dynamics, it's really a hormonal cocktail that's kind of anchoring it in.

You get these really big dopamine spikes when you are engaging in the drama and then it moves into the conflict cycle and that's the cortisol spike.

And then you move through that cycle into repair and then you get this flood of oxytocin

imagine repeating that cycle over and over and over in a really dramatic relationship that really

creates a sense of bonding i remember i had been locked in the bathroom and i was looking in the

mirror at my own reflection and I could barely recognize

myself. He, you know, had sort of just left our home with all of his belongings in the home

just sort of ghosted me. I lost all of my money. Everything has been taken. He came in to grab some

things. As he drove off down that road, I stood there on the side of the road and I had no shoes on.

We tend to clarify our environment and the people who are meant to walk with by showing up as our most authentic self in the present moment.

And that either qualifies people to remain in our lives or it clarifies that they're no longer a fit.

What is it in your experience that confuses us from a somatic experience between chemistry that's

intense and true love.

Well, I mean, I think what's interesting about trauma bonds is that there are this really

intense attachment that are formed through highs and lows.

So you're basically going on a roller coaster with somebody and that's how you're bonding

with them, right?

And that is not obviously love, but it's the most familiar thing and so for a lot of us our original imprint of

what we would maybe unconsciously deem love is uncertainty or chaotic or disorganized in some way.

And so there is this imprint in the nervous system of anticipation or uncertainty or excitement

or that high and low.

And so, you know, from a nervous system, neurology standpoint,

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