E083 - Trauma Bond vs. Real Love: 3 Key Feelings That Reveal the Difference

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[00:00:00] By the end of today's episode, you will finally understand the difference between a trauma bond and real love.

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Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

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Hello and welcome back. I have to say that one of the most mind-bending mind fuckery experiences of healing from a narcissistic relationship involves trying to understand trauma bonding and trying to understand if you were trauma bonded or if you were actually in love.

So this episode is super important for you to start to find some clarity there. By the end of today's episode, you are going to be able to better understand what a trauma bond actually feels like and how it's different than real love. You're going to be able to name the [00:01:00] top three biggest red flag feelings that occur in trauma bonded relationships,

And you're gonna understand what a healthy relationship actually should look like. And be sure to stick around to the end of the episode where I will pull an Oracle card that will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay more anchored in your healing.

Okay, so this topic of trauma bonding versus real love is one that I get into with all of my clients because it is so fucking confusing. One of the reasons that it's so confusing is that the term is misused. So trauma bonding doesn't mean going out on a date with somebody and oversharing your trauma.

That's just called oversharing. Trauma bonding is when you feel deeply attached to somebody who hurts you. So you are drawn back to this person who hurts you physically, mentally, spiritually, sexually, financially. Their abuse can look a lot of different ways.

You're drawn back to them and you keep going back in this powerful and [00:02:00] addictive cycle that confuses love with pain. So that is what trauma bonding is. But what does that feel like? What does that, what does it feel like to be trauma bonded? Because you might be asking yourself, well, I don't know.

There were some parts of my relationship that felt pretty shitty and there were other parts that felt amazing. So if you're in that confusion place, keep listening. We're we are gonna find some clarity today. And I wanna do that by offering you a story from a client of mine to really help you understand what trauma bonding feels like.

Because sometimes we get thrown all of these definitions and it's hard to like see ourselves in that. So if you're wondering, like my client was wondering, is this a trauma bond or a real love? This will help give you some clarity. Okay. So this client came to me, she was dumbfounded, right?

She came to me post relationship, and she's looking back in hindsight on how the relationship started, what it felt like and what it turned into. And she's explaining to me this relationship that starts. A lot of our relationships start in these [00:03:00] types of dynamics where you feel this soulmate connection,

you're like, oh my God, this is love at first sight. Or maybe it's not love at first sight, but it's like this specialness that you have never felt before. You are like the center of this person's universe and they're just pouring desire on you. Now this client of mine, she, she found this guy and

he was very handsome. He was very charismatic, but he also like went to yoga and was into mountain biking. He was kind of rugged but like could dress well. He liked to meditate. And he constantly talked about how much work he had done on himself, how much, how much childhood trauma he had healed, and he had all of this lingo that was really appealing to her because she was also trying to do work on herself, and she wanted somebody who.

Was in that same lame. The other thing about this guy was that [00:04:00] everybody loved him. So when she started dating him, she was getting all of this external validation of, oh my God, so and so, so amazing. You're so lucky. You guys are like a power couple together. You guys are perfect. And to hear all of that stuff feels really validating and feels really good.

So my client was stoked when she met this guy. and as they're starting their relationship, he's sending her all of these long, beautiful text messages

About how he feels so deeply attached to her

that she was this queen that he had been waiting for. He was paying attention to what she said, which is so damn sexy. Am I right? So he is paying attention to what she said she, he's buying her this really exclusive, specific coffee that only comes from a certain place that you have to order online and buy in bulk.

And the whole gesture was very sweet and she had never had somebody go out of their way for her, right? She had never experienced somebody giving so much to her. He would surprise her on these romantic [00:05:00] dates, like spontaneously going out of town for the weekend.

Um, surprising her at work and picking her up and like going on these weekend long things without packing very much stuff. And she's like, oh my God, he's so spontaneous. This is wonderful. And it was really exciting.

So she was swooning. She was mesmerized. She was obsessed even using the word obsessed. And as they were hanging out more, she started kind of ditching plans with friends because of his spontaneity that was so alluring

and the sex. Let's talk about the sex because this is something that I'm sure all of us have felt in these relationships where it's so intense and for this client, it felt like he was just drinking her in and couldn't get enough of her physically, mentally, emotionally, all of the things that she was wanting so badly.

And after just a few weeks of dating, they started spending a lot of, a lot more time together. So these weekend long dates, trips turned into spending weeks at each other's house and sometimes not going to work because they wanted to play hooky and hang [00:06:00] out. And she noticed during this time, like.

Wow, this is, this is intense. This is exciting. This is a lot. But she also, some part of her maybe was questioning it because she wasn't being honest and truthful with her friends and her family. So when they would ask her, you know, how much time you're spending together? How's it going? She would sort of downplay all of these ground grand gestures and the amount of time that they were spending together.

And she didn't realize it at the time that that was something that was going against her value of honesty. Um, but looking back, she could see that. But because the beginning of this relationship was so grand right, so much, she had never felt so much. Desire. So, so much of being chosen, of being worthy, of being enough for somebody.

Her relationships past where a lot of her trying to convince the guy to want to be with her, or a lot of her just like climbing uphill, trying to be enough, trying to be enough.

So it was really appealing for her

So [00:07:00] things are going awesome, and she's never having felt better in her life. And so when he brings up moving in together after just a couple of weeks, it feels exciting. And she's like, fuck it, I'm gonna do it. I really like this guy.

We're really aligned. We're on the same page. We're talking about our future and marriage. All the things. So they move in together. And after about a month of living together, she started noticing some changes. He went from being this very organized person

to suddenly leaving stuff all over the house and not loading or unloading the dishwasher, which is always a point of tension in relationships. Um, but just being kind of a slob. And one of the things that she really liked about him in the beginning was when she would visit his apartment, it looked put together and she's like, oh, he's like an adult.

He knows how to keep a house.

And so she finally got up the courage to bring this up to him as they were living together. And he threw the cold shoulder at her almost immediately, saying things like.

Don't try to be my mother or I'm not a [00:08:00] child, and just shutting down the conversation. There was no conversation about it. So she started feeling like that was a little weird and she didn't love that, but you know, some of this other fun stuff was still happening, so she kind of overlooked that and thought that maybe she was being too nitpicky.

And then she started noticing that he was wanting to spend more and more time watching sports and kind of lazily, lounging around the house. And all of his free time, the yoga stopped, the mountain biking and climbing and hiking stopped. And he was not really interested in doing the things that they used to do together.

And again, it took her a little bit of courage to bring this up. Like, Hey, I would really love to go mountain biking with you this weekend. He would say things like, you're always trying to structure my weekends. I need some freedom.

Get off my back. I just wanna live, can't you just let me be? So again, she's like, this is kind of weird and not feeling as fun as it was before we moved in together. Like, what? What's happening? And it felt [00:09:00] like to her, every time that she tried to bring something up, the conversation would just go in circles. She would try to bring something up. He would dismiss it or tell her she was wrong or being too emotional or making a big deal out of nothing, and she would just leave feeling defeated over and over and over so talking in circles is happening, and as time went on,

he started becoming blatantly more mean. Every time that she wanted to go out with her friends, he would really talk down about them and make her feel guilty for spending time outside of the house. Even though when she was in the house, he didn't really want to interact with her or spend time with her there, he was starting to make comments about her body.

He was starting to talk about what she was wearing, not blatantly saying like you're dressing like a slut or something, but saying things like, do you really wanna be wearing that? Do you know what kind of message you're sending? Those types of comments where it got her thinking enough of, oh, is this something weird that I'm wearing?

Or What message am I sending? He also started to [00:10:00] drink pretty heavily, and he was binge drinking on the weekends and disappearing some weekends, and then getting really angry with her when she would bring up what the question of where were you or what happened, or why didn't you check in the type of comments that are totally acceptable in a relationship when you're worried about your partner.

And that would just lead to usually him giving her a silent treatment or somehow pulling away or hours or days at a time when she would try to share her feelings, when she would try to have these conversations. Now at this point in the relationship, she understood that something was changing.

She understood it didn't feel great, but she thought to herself, we were so in love. This man loves me so much and something has changed and I really need to figure out what I'm doing wrong. So she went into this desperation of trying to figure out what she was doing wrong and how to fix it.

She was thinking things like, oh, [00:11:00] well I'm codependent and I'm anxiously attached, so it's my fault and I need to read the books. I need to listen to the podcasts. I need to figure out how to bring topics up in a way that's not gonna upset him

and she was really taking on all of the responsibility of the relationship. She was seeing the change that was happening in the relationship as her fault and was desperately trying to figure out how to fix it. She became so consumed with trying to figure it out and trying to not upset him or trying to dance around in a circle so that he wouldn't get upset that she stopped.

Seeing her friends, she stopped doing things that she liked. She was kind of afraid to leave the house to to piss 'em off. She was losing hair from all of this stress, and she didn't equate that at the time, but she was losing hair. She was not sleeping. She was feeling prolonged anxiety for the first time in her life, and actually ended up going on anxiety medication towards the end of the relationship [00:12:00] just to try to manage everything that was happening inside of her, so she felt so confused. She knew that things were not feeling right in the relationship, but she felt so much panic around trying to figure it out, around trying to make it better, around trying to fix herself that that overshadowed the, maybe this might not be a good relationship voice in her head.

She would search and search these for these answers, and then find something that she thought would work, bring it to the conversation, bring it to the relationship, get dismissed almost immediately, and then feel really hopeless and defeated,

where often she would finally get to this point, several times throughout the relationship where she was fed up, she was actually fed up and knew she wanted to leave and maybe even started making plans to leave. And then all of a sudden, like he had spidey senses, he would come home with flowers or set up this grand date for them to go on or have this really amazing makeup sex.

And she would like wipe the whole slate clean now. [00:13:00] Can you relate to that? Because I definitely did that in my toxic relationship where one, the smallest little morsel of affection of showing you love, like justified away months of mistreatment or abuse. And that's so, so, so common, and that's what happened to this client.

She was getting stuck in these cycles of it declining and feeling really bad, her wanting to leave and then him coming back and like swooping her off of her feet again, and then all the justifications would come in, she's like, oh, he's yelling at me because he has a really stressful job and I'm just trying to talk to him at the wrong time of the day.

Or justifying the silent treatments as he's just avoidant. He doesn't know how to talk about his feelings

or convincing herself that no, he can't really mean all of the stuff that he's saying because he's a good person. I saw him be a good person in the beginning of this relationship, or justifying away the drinking as well. He just needs an out. He just [00:14:00] needs some decompression because his work is too much.

His childhood trauma is too much, and like I need to lay off. I'm being too, I'm being too nitpicky, too stingy on what I expect from a person.

So many justifications. So they would be in a good spot for a little while, and then inevitably the mean comments would start again. He would start blaming her for everything. The talking in circles would happen again. She would be really confused. She would try to find more information out about how to communicate better, how to fix her anxious attachment.

She would try it, it wouldn't work. And then he would sw her back in

And the, these cycles lasted for several years before the relationship ultimately ended,

and when it ended, she. Was left. She was left in utter confusion because she had completely let him and the relationship consume her entire life, her entire sense of self, her entire identity. And so when that was gone, she was left like, who the hell am I? And what the fuck just [00:15:00] happened?

What was that? Which I am sure is a question that you have had because the mind fuck is real. That's why you're listening to this podcast. It is very, very real. So are there any pieces of that story that you resonate with?

Are there any of the feelings that she felt that you also feel, the three red flag feelings that I really, really, really wanna highlight, that I want you to take away from this episode. Are feeling unpredictable, feeling desperation, and feeling confusion. When you're feeling those three things. In a relationship, and that's the majority of the feelings that you're having.

Stop and get curious about what that relationship is. We saw the unpredictability in the cycles, the high and low, the rollercoaster that she was on not being able to feel like anything was ever predictable or solid. We saw the desperation in her needing to find the answer, this panic feeling of, I must figure it out, this almost like [00:16:00] life or death level of, I have to make this work.

I need to change. Whatever needs to change in order for this to work, because I can't lose him. I can't live without him. I don't wanna be without him.

Really keeping her fixated and stuck in this cycle of fixing, and then feeling hopeless , that nothing was working. And then we saw the confusion. The confusion around what she was experiencing around why he wasn't the person that he presented himself to be in the first time.

This rumination around what is happening? Is it me? And really blaming herself for everything that was happening. There was no accountability. And if there were little pieces of accountability, he would just spin it right back on her to be her fault, which adds to the confusion.

So unpredictability, desperation and confusion. Pin those in your mind as the three red flag feelings. If you're feeling those in a relationship, stop and get curious about what is happening. Because in a healthy relationship, we have the opposite of those [00:17:00] things.

Things feel predictable. They feel secure, and they feel clear. Where things are exciting, but they're stable. It's not the rollercoaster, it's the road trip. The road trip is still exciting, but you're not going down drops and losing your stomach and throwing up all over yourself.

It feels secure. So you don't need the other person in order to survive. There's not that same desperation for it to work. There's a energy of committed, but unattached, which is a phrase that I love, because we can still be committed to making something work and putting in our love and our all.

Without being attached to having it have to work in order to be okay. And that's a really, that's a really healthy level of un attachment in a relationship.

So you're secure within yourself. You're secure within the relationship. And then the, the last thing is that relationships feel clear, right? You know where you stand. There's not these silent treatments and these spinning you around to try to create confusion. There's [00:18:00] communication. When something doesn't feel good, you talk about it.

There's not fighting, there are disagreements. But when there are disagreements, there's rupture and repair. There's not all out screaming matches, or trying to call, crawl your way back to your partner.

So with this client, we not only processed her experience in this trauma bond so that she could release it, but we uncovered the reasons why from her childhood that this type of relationship where love is equated with, where love is equated with pain, felt familiar and acceptable, and we worked on her self-worth and her deservingness so that she didn't feel like she needed to stay connected to someone in order to feel whole.

And we worked with what the hell she was supposed to expect in a relationship moving forward because she had never experienced a healthy relationship. So how was she supposed to know what was not asking for too much? And I'll tell you, this client was with this person for two years before she started reaching out for help, and [00:19:00] she really thought that she could do it on her own.

Maybe you felt that way too, like too confused to even try to start to explain it to somebody. Or too overwhelmed at the idea of trying to find the right support or too embarrassed to say it out loud. I know I have felt all of those things and it, those are all hurdles to getting the help and the support that we really need in order to heal from these types of experiences.

And now that she's on the other side, now that she's done the work and has the clarity around what it was and who she was and the relationship she wishes she would've done the work sooner. She wishes she would've spent those two years, knowing about relationships and believing in her inherent worth, because now she's confident and doesn't need a man's validation.

So as she starts dating again, she's not looking for that in the same way she's secure, she's not seeking somebody to complete her or make her life better. She's trusting of herself, first and foremost, and her intuition and that clear knowing that I would never [00:20:00] fall for that facade, that narcissistic people put on with the charisma and the charm and she can so clearly see how. Valuable and fragile time is, so, she's in her mid thirties and she really wants to have a family and as she sits with this whole experience of being in this relationship, she's like, I spent two years thinking that I can do it by myself and I wasted two years of my fertility.

Right? We as women have an end point at some point, and she was really upset with herself at first for this. So we processed through why, why she stayed, what took her so long to see the red flags and there's so much under there. And what she was able to do is really find compassion for herself. So now she can move forward with all of that compassion and all of this clarity and understanding.

So she's not gonna spend any more time in relationships that aren't serving her in the ways that she needs, needs and deserves to be served, so if you can relate to [00:21:00] that, like I want to ask you, what is time worth to you? If you think about where you are right now, how long do you wanna be feeling the way that you're feeling or experiencing the things that you're experiencing or putting up with the bullshit that you're putting up with, or feeling so unsure about yourself and so low in confidence that staying in a relationship feels easier than trying to navigate the dating pool.

Time is so precious.

I work with clients in several month long containers, and at the end of this client's four months, she had changed night and day in so many ways that she was so ready to do the work. She dove in head first. She trusted the process. She allowed herself to be vulnerable in a safe space, and her whole life changed.

So I want you to remember, if you are feeling stuck, if you are feeling like things are never gonna shift for you, and this is just the way relationships are, if you're in a relationship right now or healing from something that was really [00:22:00] fucked up. Healthy relationships and healthy relationship dynamics have to be learned if they weren't modeled or taught to you.

So taking the time to unpack, to learn, to understand, to find clarity is going to ripple out in every relationship in your life. We're not just talking about romantic relationships here. We're talking about friendships and work relationships, and any type of relationship that you're having with another person.

The skills that you learn by unpacking your shit and processing and being with and learning healthy skills, transcend the four months that we spend together in my programs.

Because I want you to believe that you deserve love. That feels predictable and secure and clear the majority of the time. Those are the feelings that we want in a relationship with. Of course, moments of disagreement, moments of anxiety, but we want the baseline experience to be

secure, predictable, and clear. So if you're feeling called on any level to explore what that could look like, [00:23:00] there's an interest form in the show notes and I would love to meet you to end the, I always say to end the relationship, that's so funny. To end the episode is what I'm trying to say.

We are going to pull an Oracle card. I'm starting to shuffle the deck and just tuning into what is the message that you need to hear today. A card just popped out and the card is rest. Rest is the message. So I'm gonna find rest in the book and I'll read to you what this says.

Rest calls you here. Spiritual rest, bodily rest. Both. You cannot continue to run, push, lift, serve. You cannot continue to live At the bottom of your exhale, you must rest. You must find it. Create the space to allow yourself to unplug. Quiet the mind, soften the body. Connect to the divine spirit that offers you unconditional love and respite from all of your mind.

Made worries. Put to rest the expectations of others. The shoulds, the [00:24:00] guilt, the imposter, sink into yourself. Exhale, relax, release. Rest, rest, rest. Hmm.

I love that message because it reminds me of the power of being still. When we get still, we can tap into our true self. We can tap into that intuition. We can activate the parasympathetic nervous system to help us be able to. Make understanding of what we're feeling inside and what we need to do, and find the clarity on how to move forward with that.

So take that message and find some stillness and some rest this week. As always, I'm here for you. You are not alone, and I will see you in the next episode.