A trauma bond doesn’t always look like abuse. It can look like passion, devotion, even love - but it is love entangled with survival. It is a bond built through cycles of harm and relief, where pain and comfort come from the same source.
Bessel van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score, describes how trauma rewires the brain’s sense of safety:
“Being traumatised means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on - unchanged and immutable - as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.”
In trauma bonds, love is not the only force at play. Intermittent reinforcement - the unpredictable pattern of affection followed by withdrawal - creates a neurological addiction. The brain learns to crave relief from the same place that causes distress, locking the nervous system into a state of hypervigilance, always searching for the next moment of warmth.
This isn’t just psychological; it’s biological. B.F. Skinner’s experiments with rats found that when rewards (like food) were given on a random schedule, the subjects would keep pressing the lever compulsively - even after the rewards stopped. The unpredictability itself became the hook. The same mechanism is at work in trauma bonding. When kindness is sporadic and unpredictable, it creates a stronger attachment than consistent affection would. The nervous system is trained to tolerate suffering in anticipation of relief.
Peter Levine, in Waking the Tiger, writes:
“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.”
And this is why trauma bonds persist. Even when a person knows the relationship is harmful, the nervous system clings to the hope of transformation. The belief that this time will be different.
Why It’s So Hard to Let Go
Breaking a trauma bond is not just about leaving the person - it is about unwinding a biochemical loop. The mind can understand the need to walk away, but the body does not. It remains addicted to the pattern, waiting for the next emotional high, the next moment of tenderness after withdrawal.
Even after the relationship ends, memories linger not just because of attachment, but because of the body’s unresolved survival response. The nervous system still scans for danger, still braces for the familiar rhythm of tension and release. This is why people often find themselves obsessing over the relationship, replaying conversations, craving closure that will never come.
This is where healing begins - not just through logic, but through retraining the nervous system to find safety outside the cycle.
Can There Be Love in a Trauma Bond?
It’s important to recognize that love can exist within a trauma bond - but the bond itself is sustained by something deeper than love alone. The psychological mechanisms at play - fear, dependency, intermittent reinforcement - can make the relationship feel more intense, more irreplaceable, more consuming than a healthy one. This intensity is often mistaken for a sign of deeper connection, when in reality, it is a sign of psychological entrapment.
A trauma bond is not defined by the absence of love, but by the presence of control, distress, and addiction to relief. True love does not thrive in conditions where survival is at stake.
How a Trauma Bond Differs from Being Bonded Through Trauma
It is important to make a distinction: not all deep bonds created through trauma are trauma bonds.
Two people can form a powerful attachment after enduring a traumatic event together (such as war, a shared loss, or a crisis). This is different from a trauma bond because it is not built on cycles of harm and relief, but rather on shared survival.
However, even in these cases, the bond can become a source of entrapment. If two people are not healing, they may unconsciously:
• Reinforce each other’s trauma responses.
• Become stuck in reliving the past instead of moving forward.
• Feel like no one else could ever understand them, making separation feel impossible.
The key difference between a trauma bond and a bond through trauma is that trauma bonding involves a power imbalance and psychological addiction, whereas a bond through trauma is rooted in mutual survival attachment - this requires a separate article to unpack at more depth as there are key differences and conscious abuse of power and control dynamics are not necessarily present in these cases.
Both, however, can make it difficult to move forward if not processed in a healthy way.
Breaking Free from a Trauma Bond
Leaving is not the same as healing. The nervous system must unlearn the addiction to inconsistency and rewire its sense of safety. This requires:
• Recognising the pattern - seeing intermittent reinforcement for what it is.
• Reducing contact - removing the source of addiction.
• Re-learning safety - teaching the body that stability does not have to follow suffering.
• Processing trauma separately - allowing the nervous system to find balance without dependence on the abuser.
Bessel van der Kolk explains:
“Trauma is not just an event that took place in the past, it is also the imprint left by that experience on the mind, brain, and body.”
The good news? That imprint is not permanent. Healing is possible when the body no longer searches for relief in the place that caused the pain.