Are you walking on eggshells all the time around your spouse? When you talk, does it quickly turn into a high conflict fight? Are you always stressed out and waiting for the hurt and anger cycle to begin again? Living in a trauma bond means that you are always in a state of fight, flight, freeze, and negative reactions. We are a group of trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling.
What are characteristics of a trauma bond?
There is always a lot of negativity, defending, or over explaining in a trauma bond relationship. Also, there might even be self-blame, anger, lack of self-awareness, and negative communication.
At times, in a trauma bond, high conflict fight styles stem from childhood trauma experiences. As well, couples in a trauma bond are always living with their guard up and unable to get playful and adventurous with one another.
If you are stuck in a trauma bond, the team of trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you build a loving, meaningful relationship.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
Am I living within an environment of narcissistic abuse?
Living with a narcissistic spouse in your marriage can be incredibly challenging and emotionally draining. When you are living within an environment of narcissistic abuse, you often feel inadequate. As well, you may suffer from self-blame, self-doubt, and intense anxiety.
Living with a narcissistic romantic partner or spouse can lead to clinical depression, insomnia, and PTSD symptoms we discuss later in this article. Complex trauma symptoms develop from living within an environment of narcissistic abuse.
These trauma and PTSD symptoms are from the emotional high’s and low’s from living with a narcissistic person.
If you are stuck in high conflict fights and living with a spouse who is a narcissist, Wisdom Within Counseling can help you. Emotional symptoms from psychological trauma will not just go away. In fact, living wit ha narcissistic spouse can cause post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD symptoms. Living with a narcissistic spouse means you are always emotionally empty from giving to them. When your spouse is a narcissist, you will often need a therapist to help you make yourself a priority again.
You will likely have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from being a narcissistic abuse survivor.
Your brain will be more sensitive to loud noises and on high alert. As well, you will always be looking out for danger or trying to avoid another big, hurtful fight or conflict.
This is because the traumatic events in your marriage trigger your body to go into fight, freeze, or flight response.
As a result, anything associated with those memories can trigger an anxiety attack. For some people who live with a narcissistic spouse, a door slamming from a breeze in a department store can be a trigger and reminder of a door being slammed in a recent high conflict fight.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling offers individual and couples therapy to support holistic healing and trauma recovery.
Working with the PTSD and trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you break unhealthy patterns
Trauma bonds are not permanent, but fighting couples often get stuck in a pattern of emotional abuse. Working with the trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you stop calling one another names in fights. Calling one another names in unhealthy communication.
Saying, “You are a bitch or asshole,” is a sign you are in a trauma bond relationship. If you resort to criticism and name calling, you need help getting out. It is very common for couples who are in a trauma bond to get stuck in destructive, high conflict fights.
After fighting, one or both people end up, hopeless, feeling sad, and even horrified about the hurtful things that have been said.
it is very common in a trauma bond for both people in the relationship to feel low and self-esteem. Also, may feel like your partner has very high expectations for you that you can never meet. Or, it may feel like your spouse ignores your emotional needs when you do express them.
As well, trauma bond cycles for couples have complexities like alcoholism, substance abuse, or other addictive tendencies.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
There may be an imbalance of power within your trauma bond, as well as instances of betrayal in the past. Working with the trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you heal from betrayal and reconnect together.
When couples are stuck in a trauma bond, the cycle of conflict is very self-destructive and the trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help.
Working with a team of therapists who specialize in trauma bond couples therapy can help you get grounded. The first step to healing a trauma bond in couples counseling is getting self-regulation skills. Self-care skills help you to feel calm and safe within yourself.
Getting calm in your mindset, getting mental clarity, and gaining self-worth will help you make a clear decision. Some couples in a trauma bond choose to work on their marriage in counseling and change communication patterns for the better.
Working with the complex PTSD and trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you break a trauma bond. On the other hand, some people choose to separate.
Trauma bonds can often be seen in relationships, where there is emotional abuse, manipulation, physical abuse, domestic violence, or religious abuse.
Marriages are not the only place where a trauma bond can form. However, at Wisdom Within Counseling, we specialize in couples who feel they are stuck in a trauma bond. You may need help building a healthy relationship and we can help.
It is important to note that addiction and alcoholism often go along side with a trauma bond.
There may be issues with alcoholism, eating disorders, affairs, self harm, suicidal, thinking, drug use, and even gambling in your marriage. Addictive behaviors, alcoholism, betrayal, and trauma bonds commonly go hand-in-hand.
When does a trauma bond start in a relationship?
Couples don’t always start out with trauma bonds. When you begin dating, things feel happy and playful. You feel in love, and you feel safe together. However, through a series of hurtful, angry, and intense arguments, the fight, flight, and freeze system of your body kicks in.
Fight, flight, and freeze are your PTSD trauma symptoms and trauma responses. Your body is receiving input from different challenging fights to put yourself in protective mode.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
As a result, your emotional and cognitive perception becomes more sensitive to the trauma happening again. From the trauma bond cycle that you are experiencing in your relationship, you may develop anxiety, trouble sleeping, or depression.
How does complex PTSD and trauma develop?
Often, one or both people in a trauma bond will develop complex PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. The fights that occur within your trauma bond and marriage may mirror the dysfunction that one or both of you grew up with in childhood.
Some adults have been struggling with PTSD symptoms since childhood. Other adults in a trauma bond have been struggling with PTSD symptoms since the marital fights began.
Childhood trauma experiences and the role in working with the trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling
One or both of you may have grown up in a home with an alcoholic parent, emotionally, neglectful parents, or physically, abusive parents. Childhood trauma is never your fault.
You were just a helpless child being treated in ways you did not deserve. But, it shapes us. Growing up in an environment of generational trauma means that you didn’t get the emotional skills you needed. You or your spouse may have grown up in an emotionally hurtful home.
As humans, we learn from our parents how to have a relationship. So, if you experienced childhood relationship toxicity and pain, those communication styles get carried into a romantic relationship and trauma bond.
One or both of you may have childhood trauma memories that are being repeated in your marriage and trauma bond.
Family trauma from childhood can play a big role in trauma bond couples therapy and marital counseling. When someone reacts to childhood trauma, such as after surviving sexual abuse, their body becomes hyper vigilant. You are always living in a state of self protection in a trauma bond.
Trauma bond couples therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling helps sexual abuse survivors, trauma bond, survivors, and people struggling with PTSD symptoms feel calm and safe.
From working with a complex PTSD and trauma bond couples therapy specialist, you can deal with PTSD symptoms in healthy ways. Don’t deal with symptoms of complex PTSD alone. With PTSD, you might experience flashbacks, intrusive, thoughts, and insomnia, through different holistic, coping tools.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
Your trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you become aware of when your body shifts into a hyper vigilant state.
Even after a fight in your marriage is over, you and your partner may still be suffering from physical symptoms. Physical trauma symptoms can include increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and emotional reactivity.
You may also be triggering one another’s childhood trauma. If one of you wants space alone, the other fears abandonment. Especially after sexual abuse or physical abuse in childhood, it is more common to be living in a hyper vigilant state.
How can it look to be living in a trauma bond? What are symptoms of complex PTSD and trauma that counseling can help you with?
Some people who have experienced trauma or are stuck in a trauma bond, may take part in higher risk activities.
Some adults cope in unhealthy ways with dangerous, thrill-seeking behaviors, such as skydiving, gambling, or alcoholism.
It is common for people with PTSD to deal with trauma memories through thrill-seeking behaviors. To note, becoming a workaholic is not necessarily a healthy way of dealing with trauma either.
Additionally, one or both people in a trauma bond marriage may engage in high-risk sexual behaviors. They might use drugs, like cocaine, and constantly be seeking excitement to numb the pain.
Making dangerous, impulsive, and unhealthy decisions is one of the trauma responses that comes with being in a trauma bond and suffering from PTSD.
Addiction and alcoholism are often very common in a trauma bond. One or both people may have alcoholism and deal with intrusive memories by drinking alcohol in excess.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
As well, some people may watch mind numbing amounts of television, spend hours on social media, or sleep all day. Oversleeping is a trauma symptom to numb out. PTSD symptoms can look different for each person and may have even begun in childhood.
Rather than facing the pain in counseling, it is very common for people in a trauma bond marriage to drink away the pain and become alcoholics.
As soon as the alcohol wears off, you or your spouse are drinking again to push away the trauma memories and the painful experiences. But, you also notice that drinking alcohol makes the fights worse.
Holistic therapy for PTSD at Wisdom Within Counseling can help with self soothing skills. And, you can create a sense of true relaxation and peacefulness.
Alcohol and addiction can become incredibly stressful for your marriage and need to be dealt with in counseling.
If you find yourself using alcohol or drugs to escape from emotional pain and PTSD symptoms, working with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you fin healthy outlets.
You can start to build confidence in mental clarity from the inside out rather than using TV in excess, or drugs or alcohol as a way to cope.
Even eating disorders, binge eating, anorexia, and bulimia are always to deal with PTSD symptoms.
The team of trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling help you deal with the root of addiction and alcoholism. From there, you can truly reduce anxiety, love yourself, and prevent relapse.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
If you are in a marriage where are you feel you are stuck in a trauma bond, you are not alone. There is professional help available through working with the team at Wisdom Within Counseling.
How can meeting with the team of complex PTSD and trauma bond couples therapy specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling help?
You can gain healthy coping skills like meditation, yoga, or even painting, an art therapy to deal with troubling, triggering, dreams, or physical symptoms of trauma.
Holistic counseling can help teach individuals and couples how to handle PTSD symptoms, and heal from traumatic experiences.
Through holistic counseling, you can try somatic therapies, mind-body, therapies, and deep muscle relaxation meditations to feel calm.
Also, you can start to regain your self-worth. You can learn that you don’t longer have to be a victim, and you have more power than you may realize. By gaining stress management techniques, you can start to feel safe within your body again.
If you are looking for a trauma bond couples therapy specialist, we would love to help you improve your marriage.
From couples counseling, you can better articulate what you are feeling, and gain a sense of emotional validation through marital therapy.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
If you feel like you are stuck on a hamster wheel and always holding everything together, trauma bond couples counseling can help you feel grounded and relax.
You can gain a sense of mental clarity and self-worth after different experiences of childhood trauma where you felt wronged and hurt.
Now, if you experienced emotional or narcissistic abuse as a child, you may have developed coping tools that no longer serve you. Fears of abandonment are common when growing up with narcissistic parents. As well, it is normal to suffer from a heightened fear of people leaving you, or abandoning you. These fears of abandonment may play a role in high conflict fights in your marriage.
Also, from complex PTSD counseling, you can start to build meaningful conversations from a calm place.
Rather than reacting from fear or anger, you can learn skills to improve the communication in your marriage. Also, healthy coping skills are a benefit of starting trauma bond couples therapy.
You can start talking about the root of trauma in couples therapy and how to cope in a healthy, holistic way.
We offer a holistic approach both in person and on video to help couples break the cycle of fighting and truly step into loving one another.
It’s very common for couples who are fighting to re-trigger each other’s wounds from childhood trauma. The couples therapy specialists at Wisdom within Counseling teach you how to have conversations about intense topics without getting triggered or intensely angry.
There are so many emotions underneath anger such as hurt, shame, loss, grief, and neglect that can all be a part of your couples counseling experience.
Trauma Bond, PTSD and Trauma Specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling
Holistic therapy at Wisdom Within Counseling with one of our trauma bond, couples therapy specialists can help you understand how to reconnect with your mind and body.
If you grew up in an emotionally abusive environment, or your spouse did, Wisdom Within Counseling can support you. As well, if you’ve found yourself dealing with a narcissistic spouse who doesn’t seem to understand your emotional needs, counseling can help. Narcissistic abuse is never okay and counseling can help promote positive change in your romantic relationship.
To begin, click to book your phone consult below to work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
You might feel a bit confused, hurt, hopeless, and lost right now about the state of your romantic relationship with a narcissist.
It is common for victims of narcissistic abuse to lose touch with hobbies and lose their sense of self. Counseling at Wisdom Within with the team of complex trauma bond specialists can support you in gaining self-worth skills. You can have support and emotional guidance finding way back to the person you once were.
By gaining mind and body connection, the trauma memories become less intense and no longer interfere with your life as much.
Couples who work with a trauma bond couples therapy specialists can bond in a loving way. From counseling, you may realize that you no longer need high risk behaviors to build such an adrenaline rush. You can learn to deal with intense emotions and trauma in holistic, creative, and healthier ways.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling offer holistic, expressive arts like music therapy, drama therapy, Gottman marital therapy, and walking by the beach.
These are somatic therapies that support mind-body connection for couples to fall in love again.
Painting, art, walk and talk therapy by the beach, and music therapy can all help you in trauma bond couples therapy.
