Trauma bond — what it can mean
Today’s session focused on the trauma bond — an emotional attachment that can form in harmful relationships where suffering and kindness alternate and create a powerful hold. I describe the dynamic, offer a Jungian symbolic reading, and give four steps that may support gradual separation and a return to the Self.
By Iveta Upeniece
What trauma bond can mean
Usually I work on weekdays, but sometimes — in special situations — I work on weekends too, like today, and in this session we talked a lot about what is commonly called a trauma bond. A trauma bond is an emotional attachment that can form in violent or toxic relationships and is tied to suffering, humiliation, fear, tenderness, love and hope; some people later describe a long, hard-to-shake sense of emptiness after such relationships end.
From the outside it may look like people simply “choose” to stay, but the bond is often far stronger than it appears; it can reshape how someone perceives their reality and what they expect from a partner.
Alternating harm and warmth
The central experience is the alternation of harm and warmth — the partner hurts, then is suddenly very kind, which repeatedly renews hope that things will change. This repeated contrast can create a powerful longing for the rare moments of calm, and some people describe the whole pattern as feeling like an iron-bar trap — a metaphor for how inescapable it seems from the inside.
In subjective experience, the repeated stress and relief can make concentration, sleep and memory more difficult for some people and produce chronic anxiety; language such as “high alert” or “being worn out” can be useful to describe what is happening without implying a single fixed biological cause.
Responsibility reversal and control
A common tactic that keeps the bond alive is shifting responsibility onto the victim: minimization, blaming the other for provoking the behaviour, gaslighting — for example telling someone they are overreacting or inventing things — and using insults, comparisons or lists meant to shame. There are many variations, but these patterns work to preserve control.
It is important to be clear that responsibility for violence, coercion and manipulation lies with the person who uses them. The same dynamic can also reinforce the aggressor’s behaviour — power and control can be experienced as rewarding — but that is a description of the dynamic, not an excuse.
Jungian symbolic perspective
In a Jungian symbolic reading, the aggressor can represent a shadow aspect or a destructive animus/anima — an attractive and dangerous force that may be experienced as annihilating; in dreams such a figure may appear as an attacker, thief or criminal. A person may become identified with a victim role and long for an external rescuer while gradually rebuilding their own agency.
The task on an individuation path is to notice and separate your Self from the aggressor archetype and its hold over the ego — to recognize that your inner worth and real life are not determined by another person’s judgments or moods.
Gradual separation and return to the Self
1. Become aware that you may be caught in a psychoemotional trap — name the pattern and accept that separation is often gradual; for some people the therapeutic work can take years, and it does not need to happen all at once.
2. See and begin to believe that the aggressor is not your fate and is not necessarily attached to you for life — this shift in thinking loosens the sense of inevitability.
3. Begin to reclaim power back to yourself and your Self — practice small acts that restore autonomy and remind you that your identity is larger than any aggressor.
4. Allow for the possibility of resistance — the harmful partner may respond with anger, blame, accusations or attempts to punish you for leaving the ‘trap.’ As you stop treating them as your whole world, their emotional hold may weaken; remember that the bond can feel like a fine web woven from many threads, and cultural narratives that romanticize suffering can keep people entangled — are you afraid of being alone, or afraid of meeting yourself? If there is a risk to your safety, consider involving trusted people, professional support or emergency services available where you live.