Trauma Bonding & the Narcissist – No One Does it Better!

Feeling attached to a narcissist or sociopath even though he treats us badly is a constant source of angst for those in recovery from toxic relationships. Victims want to know why…why can’t I just let go of this guy? Why can’t I move on? Why am I obsessed with no closure? Why do I feel so connected to someone who feels no connection to me? One logical answer to this is that we’re normal and they’re not and normal people want to fix things that are broken so that they work again. The problem of course is a narcissist can’t be fixed because he never was right to begin with. In essence, the narcissist isn’t broken at all. He simply is what he is and what he is no good. This being true, what do we do, after a Discard, when we can’t shake the feeling of being only ½ a person without him…of feeling utterly attached even when we’re apart and even when he’s with someone else? Why can’t we disconnect from the Bad Man? Well, there is an answer to this for those who seek a deeper psychological reason for the suffering and it’s a condition often referred to as trauma bonding.

When we think of trauma bonding, we typically associate it with The Stockholm Syndrome (TSS) – a condition named after a situation that occurred in XXXX where a group of hostages became attached to their kidnapers. TSS, however, although certainly similar to trauma bonding, typically occurs in life-threatening situations where the victim is literally in fear of dying at the hands of her toxic, abusive partner. Trauma bonding is more descriptive of the attachment dilemma that occurs from the type of trauma caused to our emotions (i.e. betrayal and neglect, over and over and over). It’s the type of bonding that can easily occur via passive-aggressive manipulation (i.e. sex, lies, silent treatments) and other forms of narcissistic control.

The narcissist partner, as cunning as he or she is, understands the process for streamlining a victim’s codependency to point of least resistance. He has actually figured out – without a single day of formal training – that the best way to ensure narcissistic supply is to create trauma bonds with his targets via the method of “seduce and discard”.  He has figured out an easy way to turn us into narcissist enablers.

The conditioning that leads to trauma bonding focuses on two powerful sources of reinforcement reoccurring in succession over and over and at perfectly timed intervals. Psychologists call this reinforcement the ‘arousal-jag’ which actually refers to the excitement before the trauma (arousal) occurs and the peace of surrender afterwards (jag). Take a second to reflect on the narcissist’s behaviors. Creating trauma bonds is what he’s been doing his whole life!

‘Arousal-jag’ reinforcement is all about giving a little and then taking it away over and over and over in well timed intervals. Narcissists do this all the time (disappearing/reappearing, silence/chaos) whereby creating an illusion of twisted excitement that reinforces the traumatic bond between us and them. And to be clear, the narcissist feels a connection here as well only his connection is to the excitement alone and not to us. This is why a narcissist always has multiple partners because it doubles and triples his excitement factor. The fact that we – along with others – become so attached to the chaos that we eagerly await a hoover is quite an added bonus!

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The excitement before the trauma (of betrayal and neglect) is created during the devalue stage…that point in time right before a discard when our intuition has already told us he’s going to leave based on his behaviors. It’s that knot-in-the-stomach feeling, the overwhelming urge to cal his phone 100 times, the torment of cognitive dissonance…. it’s the hours spent scouring the internet looking for clues…it’s the feeling we get from the chaos that a narcissist ALWAYS creates right before the storm.  Like it or not, we become highly addicted to his narcissistic behaviors and all of the nonsense and we miss it like a motherfucker when it’s gone….when, suddenly, it all goes silent. We long for the connection – as manipulated and fabricated as it is – until we can barely breathe. Then, right before we commit hari-kari, in swoops the narcissist once again – seemingly back from the dead like a Phoenix rising – to give us the second reinforcement: the peace of surrender that happens afterwards. His reappearance is meticulously timed for maximum effect and usually follows a silent treatment that has lasted just a tad longer than the one before. The narcissist is conditioning us to accept less and less so he can get away with more each time he vanishes.

Either way, this second dose of reinforcement – the peace of surrender – is absolutely heaven! Again, it’s an addiction – to the narcissist and the make-up sex, to the vanishing of our anxiety, and to the feeling of calmness and euphoria we get from knowing that, once again, we’ve been given a reprieve to breathe until the cycle repeats again. Seduce and discard…seduce and discard….till the end of all fucking time. And, at that moment, we’re actually okay with that! In fact, there’s nothing in the world we’d rather be doing.

As I am writing this, I am realizing that my ex worked very, very hard at trauma bonding. In fact, he was a Master at it! Silent treatments would run two weeks on/ two weeks – like clockwork – for months at a time and with no explanation. Then, from mid-October to mid-January – every year for 13 years – he made like Houdini and fell completely off the grid.  Right before he left, he always ramped up the chaos, making me horribly anxious and angry yet desperate for his attention. But I was addicted to it and he knew it.  Wayne knew exactly what he was doing!

Our addiction to the narcissistic chaos and then to the reprieve also explains why we find it so hard to maintain No Contact and/or to move on into new relationships after it’s over. No one excites us in quite the same way or with the same intensity as a toxic partner. Via trauma bonding, we become the suffering and the suffering becomes us. We forget what normalcy feels like. The chaos and turmoil becomes almost as big a turn-on for us as it does for the N.

Be Sure to Read the Following Related Posts...What is the Narcissist REALLY thinking? (Part 3/3 – Sociopath Series)The Narcissist’s Control/Validate Tactic is Simplified Evil Reflections on 13 Months of No Contact Plausible Denial is the Narcissist’s Free PassRecognizing the Signs of a Narcissistic Personality