The Betrayal Bond Quotes

“Abandonment is at the core of addictions. Abandonment causes deep shame. Abandonment by betrayal is worse than mindless neglect. Betrayal is purposeful and self-serving. If severe enough, it is traumatic. What moves betrayal into the realm of trauma is fear and terror. If the wound is deep enough, and the terror big enough, your bodily systems shift to an alarm state. You never feel safe. You’re always on full-alert, just waiting for the hurt to begin again. In that state of readiness, you’re unaware that part of you has died. You are grieving. Like everyone who has loss, you have shock and disbelief, fear, loneliness and sadness. Yet you are unaware of these feelings because your guard is up. In your readiness, you abandon yourself. Yes, another abandonment.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Betrayal. A breach of trust. Fear. What you thought was true—counted on to be true—was not. It was just smoke and mirrors, outright deceit and lies. Sometimes it was hard to tell because there was just enough truth to make everything seem right. Even a little truth with just the right spin can cover the outrageous. Worse, there are the sincerity and care that obscure what you have lost. You can see the outlines of it now. It was exploitation. You were used. Everything in you wants to believe you weren’t.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Loyalty to that which does not work, or worse, to a person who is toxic, exploitive or destructive to you, is a form of insanity.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“If you are reading this book, a clear betrayal has probably happened in your life. Chances are that you have also bonded with the person or persons who have let you down. Now here is the important part: You will never mend the wound without dealing with the betrayal bond. Like gravity, you may defy it for a while, but ultimately it will pull you back. You cannot walk away from it. Time will not heal it. Burying yourself in compulsive and addictive behaviors will bring no relief, just more pain. Being crazy will not make it better. No amount of therapy, long-term or short-term, will help without confronting it. Your ability to have a spiritual experience will be impaired. Any form of conversion or starting over only postpones the inevitable. And there is no credit for feeling sorry for yourself. You must acknowledge, understand and come to terms with the relationship.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Unless we learn how to handle betrayal and the torturous, obsessional relationships that evolve out of treachery, we add to the betrayal of the planet. Trust is restored when we learn to trust ourselves and build trust with others. There is no other way.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“More and more studies show that alcoholics may switch to other addictions. Addiction becomes a solution to the trauma.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“One long-term impact of trauma is the fact that often-traumatized individuals have difficulty recognizing how they are feeling and then fail to respond in an appropriate and helpful way. They become out of touch with their own feelings, bodies, and needs, which in turn makes it more difficult to respond to the feelings, sensations, and needs of others in their lives.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“In part this is an intimacy disorder, for as soon as she starts to recommit to the relationship, he starts distancing himself. The intensity begins to build again. He feels trapped or jealous or possessive or something else that distances him from her. Imagine that a relationship is a circle. For true intimacy to take place, both must stay in the circle at the same time.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Addicts can clearly know they need to stop and cannot. Despite the consequences they continue high-risk behavior. They become so obsessed with the behavior that all their life priorities—children, work, values, family, hobbies, friends—are sacrificed for the behavior and the preoccupation that goes with it. The addiction becomes a way to escape or obliterate pain. The addict needs the behavior in order to feel normal. Now reread the previous paragraph and substitute the word relationship for the word behavior.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“What moves betrayal into the realm of trauma is fear and terror. If the wound is deep enough, and the terror big enough, your bodily systems shift to an alarm state. You never feel safe. You’re always on full-alert, just waiting for the hurt to begin again.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Trust is restored when we learn to trust ourselves and build trust with others. There is no other way. By”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“The bottom line is: Your life is up to you. Take charge of it, or somebody else will.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“defines trauma as “any experience which stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected from our bodies”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Betrayal is the sense of being harmed by the intentional actions or omissions of a trusted person.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Betrayal, addiction and trauma weave a design of continually recycled wounds that create an overarching pattern of compulsive relationships.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Seduction is high warmth with low intention”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all. JEAN GENET, PRISONER OF LOVE”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Today, our society is caught in the grip of superficial values—glamour, glitter, materialism, a pathological emphasis on youth, a neglect of the elderly, the handicapped. Families are being broken up under the impact of a frenzied desire for success. Violence is glorified and paraded in front of children every day on the media.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“The revolution is about relationships. Whether it is betrayal by seduction, terror, power, intimacy, or spirit, exploitation is simply no longer acceptable. We’ve surveyed centuries of damage, and we know better. We need to move toward a culture of mutuality and respect. We can build our relationships on the basis of our competencies, needs, and care. Men and women need to share power and privilege. All of us must commit to the nurturing of children.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Cheryl was a domestic abuse victim. She was in court eleven times because her husband had assaulted her. She felt terrible shame. Every time he beat her he screamed about it being her fault because she was so heavy. She felt the accusations were true. She knew she had problems with food and that she needed to do something. But it helped her get through the day. Besides, it was the one thing he could not control. There was an added dividend: Being fat made her sexually unattractive. She hated sex. She was an incest victim. Food was protection. Food was comfort.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Those who have experienced trauma may find that they blow up in response to minor provocations, freeze when frustrated, or become helpless in the face of trivial challenges. This inflexibility diminishes the capacity to choose, and without understanding the context of the reactions, their behavior can appear bizarre or out of control. “Neuroimaging”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Abandonment by betrayal is worse than mindless neglect. Betrayal is purposeful and self-serving.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“It is also the soothing, medicating and nurturing that are part of betrayal bonding. Both partners are obsessed with whether she is going to accept the promise again. Neither partner has to come to grips with the pain or patterns of their lives.”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

“Our world is no longer a safe place. Perhaps it never was. Between 1985 and 1993, exposure to violence increased 176 percent for the average junior high school student. Fifty percent of the women in our culture will experience some form of sexual assault during their lifetimes. We are all aware of the shrinking global village. Violence in other lands seems closer than ever before. Terrorism and hatred leak across our borders. No longer can we say that it’s not our problem. We know what violence does to people. Alice Miller, the famous psychotherapist, described the process in her classic book For Your Own Good. German children in the 1920s and 1930s became acclimatized to physical violence. They saw it in their homes, where physical punishment was routine. By today’s standards, this same form of punishment would be abusive. They saw it in the streets. Germany lost a war they felt they should have won. They felt betrayed by their leaders. Political and economic chaos surrounded them. Children learned to split off from the violence. They learned to make it unreal, which is why as adults, Miller points out, they could be in the presence of concentration camps and remain unmoved.2”
― Patrick J. Carnes, The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships