“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
— Buddha

“A bad relationship is like standing on broken glass, if you stay you will keep hurting. If you walk away, you will hurt but eventually, you will heal.”
― Autumn Kohler

“You owe yourself the love that you so freely give to others.”
― Unknown

What Keeps Us Going Back:

The Psychology of Unhealthy Relationships

By Kevin Bergen, MFT

As a therapist, I’ve walked with many clients through the confusion and heartache of unhealthy, even abusive, relationships. Often, I hear a version of the same quiet, aching question:

“Why do I keep going back?”

I’ve known the term trauma bond for a while now, but recently I realized that while I could recognize it in a client’s story, I couldn’t always explain it in a way that felt human and freeing—not just clinical. So I started digging in again—not just to refresh my memory, but to learn how to teach it better. What I found began clicking into place in a whole new way. And the more I learned, the more I could see specific, poignant truths that matched faces and stories from my own caseload. This is a little of what I’ve been discovering.

My Question: What exactly is a trauma bond?

A trauma bond is a powerful emotional attachment formed in a harmful, often abusive relationship. What makes it so confusing is that this attachment often doesn’t feel like trauma—it feels like love. Like loyalty. Like safety—because sometimes, it is. At least temporarily.

The cycle that creates a trauma bond often looks like this: harm, followed by affection or remorse, followed by more harm. That intermittent reinforcement—kindness woven into pain—actually strengthens the attachment. The brain and body learn to hold on, to survive, to hope for the next moment of comfort.

Trauma bonds are especially common in relationships where there’s a power imbalance, such as:

• Romantic relationships involving emotional or physical abuse
• Parent-child dynamics marked by manipulation or neglect
• High-demand workplaces or spiritual communities
• Trafficking and cult environments

It’s not about weakness or codependence. It’s about survival. Our nervous systems are designed to seek attachment—even when that attachment is deeply unsafe. When the same person is both the source of comfort and pain, it’s incredibly difficult to let go.

My Question: Does a diagnosis help here—or hurt?

I’ve always had a bit of ambivalence around diagnoses. Sometimes they’re helpful—especially when they validate a client’s experience or give language to a confusing pattern. But I’ve also seen the weight they carry. A diagnosis can become a label, a lens that distorts the way someone sees themselves. It can suggest permanence, pathology, or shame.

More important to me than identifying what someone has is understanding how they’re relating—to others and to themselves. That’s where trauma bonding lives. And that’s where healing begins.

My Question: Still, are some people more prone to trauma bonds than others?

While trauma bonding doesn’t require a diagnosis, certain psychological patterns or conditions may make someone more susceptible. For example:

• Complex PTSD (C-PTSD): Chronic relational trauma—especially in childhood—can make chaotic attachment feel normal or even comforting (Herman, 1992).
• Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): With intense fear of abandonment and fluctuating self-image, relationships can swing between idealization and despair, reinforcing the cycle (Linehan, 1993).
• Dependent Personality Disorder: When someone believes they can’t survive alone, they may tolerate harm to avoid separation.
• Narcissistic abuse survivors: Narcissistic partners often use charm, devaluation, and intermittent validation—classic trauma bond dynamics (Carnes, 2012).
• Insecure or disorganized attachment styles: Early inconsistency or neglect shapes expectations about love and safety.
• Addiction: The rush of reunion or “making up” after harm can mimic an addictive high.

Still, I’ve seen trauma bonds form in people with no formal diagnosis. The real question is usually: What did this person learn love was supposed to feel like?

My Question: So what helps? How do people actually heal from a trauma bond?

This is the heart of it. Healing isn’t about flipping a switch—it’s about repatterning how someone experiences love, connection, and self-worth. And that healing happens both in therapy and outside of it.

In Therapy

1. Psychoeducation: Clients need to understand what trauma bonds are and why they form. The moment they learn about intermittent reinforcement, something often clicks: “That’s why I kept hoping it would get better. That’s why the good moments felt so powerful.”
2. Narrative Work: We begin retelling the story—not erasing the pain, but re-framing their place in it. Many people internalize the belief that they caused the dysfunction. Revisiting the past with compassion brings clarity and choice.
3. Parts Work (Inspired by Internal Family Systems): It’s common for clients to feel divided—one part wants to stay, another wants to leave, a third just wants peace. Giving each part a voice reduces shame and builds self-trust.
4. Boundary Practice: Boundaries aren’t just about keeping others out; they’re about protecting our own center. Practicing small boundaries helps clients learn they can tolerate the discomfort of saying no—and survive.
5. Somatic Awareness: Trauma lives in the body. Teaching clients to notice how they feel in a trauma-bonded relationship—tight chest, frozen posture, numbness—builds their capacity to respond, not just react.
6. The Therapeutic Relationship Itself: A safe, consistent relationship with a therapist can model a new kind of love—one that doesn’t manipulate, demand, or punish. Naming and honoring the client’s growth becomes a powerful form of repatterning.

Outside of Therapy

1. Supportive Community: Whether through groups like SLAA, CODA, church support, or chosen family, healing accelerates when people feel seen and known by others who aren’t trying to control or use them.
2. Spiritual Connection: Many people find healing in a deeper relationship with God, or with a spiritual force they trust. Prayer, meditation, scripture, and ritual help root identity in something stable and kind.
3. No-Contact or Low-Contact Boundaries: Creating distance from the person involved is often essential. For many clients, clarity only arrives once the emotional and neurological fog begins to lift.
4. Journaling and Reflection: Writing helps clients reconnect with their internal world. Prompts like, “When have I silenced myself for someone else’s comfort?” can reveal patterns that were once invisible.
5. Rebuilding Self-Trust: Trauma bonds fracture our belief that we can trust ourselves. Healing involves small, consistent acts of follow-through—getting out of bed, drinking water, keeping a boundary. Over time, that consistency becomes a lifeline.

My Question: Some people tend to fixate on a bothersome thought and just can’t let it go. How does this affect someone with trauma history?

Rumination is the process of continuously thinking about the same thoughts—usually negative ones—over and over again. It’s different from reflection, which is more balanced and purposeful. Reflection can lead to insight and resolution, but rumination tends to go in circles, leaving us stuck, anxious, or hopeless.

When we dwell on thoughts or replay a situation, we’re either ruminating or reflecting. When we ruminate, we don’t mean to, but we dwell on distressful events, focusing on how unfair something was or what we might have done wrong. When we reflect, we’re more consciously problem-solving—trying to understand a situation so we won’t repeat it. Of the two, ruminating is negative and has been linked to depression, anxiety, and insomnia (Zhang et al., 2024).

We often ruminate with good intentions. Our brains are wired to solve problems, so we go back to a painful event thinking we can analyze our way out of the hurt. But trauma bonds weren’t created logically, and they can’t be unraveled logically either. In the context of trauma, rumination becomes a way of trying to make sense of an experience that disrupted our sense of safety and identity.

References

• Carnes, P. (2012). The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships. Health Communications, Inc.
• Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.
• Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder. Guilford Press.
• Martínez-Vispo, C., López-Durán, A., Senra, C., & Becoña, E. (2022). Brooding rumination and anxiety sensitivity: Associations with depressive and anxiety symptoms in treatment-seeking smokers. Psicothema, 34(1), 49–55.
• Zhang, X., Wang, F., Zou, L., & Lee, S. Y. (2024). Depressive symptoms, sleep-wake features, and insomnia among female students: The role of rumination. Journal of Health Psychology, 13591053241258252.