When Love Hurts: Trauma Bonds and How to Break Them

Love is meant to feel supportive and safe — yet sometimes, connection becomes intertwined with pain, intensity, and emotional survival. When familiar patterns of hurt feel hard to leave, it can be deeply confusing and exhausting, even when part of you knows something isn’t right.

In this episode of Heal Within, I explore trauma bonds — how they form, why they can feel so powerful, and why breaking them is not about willpower or logic, but about restoring safety within the nervous system. We gently look at how the body learns to associate love with intensity and unpredictability, and why healing begins when the body no longer needs pain to feel connected.

This episode also includes a guided healing meditation to support grounding, release, and the rebuilding of inner safety — allowing connection to be experienced with clarity, calm, and discernment.

You are not weak for staying.

You are healing when your body learns it is safe to let go.

With love,
Dr. Evette Rose 🌿 

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome And Intentions
• 0:57 Defining Trauma Bonds
• 3:25 When One Person Heals First
• 4:52 Inconsistency And Survival Wiring
• 6:46 Friendship Bonds And Shared Wounds
• 9:40 Calm Love Versus Chaos
• 11:32 Symptoms Of A Trauma Bond
• 12:44 Safety, Not Willpower
• 13:52 Guided Healing Meditation
• 28:14 Grounding, Affirmations, And Close

Transcript

Speaker: 0:06

Welcome here to Heal Within with Dr. Evette Rose, trauma therapist and also creator of Metaphysical Anatomy Technique. And this podcast is your safe place to explore emotional healing, nervous system repair, and also deep inner transformation. And if you are ready to go deeper and you would like to be supported on your journey, you can always book your one-on-one session with me or any of my metapsychology coaching practitioners. So you can join any of our upcoming live healing events, workshops, and also our retreats at metaphysicalanatomy.com. And so now let's begin your journey back to wholeness, one breath and one breakthrough at a time. And today's podcast episode is When Love Hearts, Trauma Bonds and How to Break Them. And let me tell you, trauma bonds, it can happen to anyone. And one thing that I have come to learn as I've worked with my clients, with my students, is that so many people don't realize that they already are in a trauma-bonded dynamic. And this is quite understandable. I myself have been there, and not blaming the person that I was trauma-bonded to, I mean it's a two-way street. Especially, especially, if you have asked yourself, when you look at certain dynamics that in your life that maybe have started to feel a little bit heavy, you always feel maybe drained or sad, or you feel like that heavy blanket or this negativity when you think about connecting, perhaps, when you think of perhaps connecting to a certain person, or for me personally, it would be like this sudden feeling of maybe um depression, sadness, and not really looking forward to connecting with someone, feeling strong resistance, whereas in the past it felt great, it felt positive, it felt good, like there was some kind of great connection. And here's how this can also have a plot twist. It's not just always about how you feel. It can also be that maybe the other person starts to feel maybe a heavy connection with you, or maybe it didn't feel as good as what it used to, and they start to feel the strain of the relationship dynamic. Now, why is it that sometimes one person can start to feel that way and the other person does not? You see, it depends when two people come together who trauma bond it. If one person heals more than the other person, then the commonality on which you bond it shifts. And this also changes and it shifts your foundation and your dynamic as well. The original attraction and banter or chemistry that was there changes, and sometimes people don't realize that it could be because of that, right? So there's just this gradual withering away of the dynamic that used to feel really good, and sometimes people might find themselves asking, right? Maybe you are aware of these negative symptoms that's starting to creep in, but you don't make a change, and then you start asking yourself, why do I stay when it hurts? Why do I miss someone that maybe caused me pain? Why does leaving feel harder than staying? You see, trauma bond, when it starts to move into that dynamic, trauma bond, it's not love, it's emotional survival. And when we look at the perspective from it being a trauma survival attachment, this is a dynamic that can form when maybe emotional pain and emotional relief come from the same person. It can also be there's a strong fear of abandonment or there's rejection that's mixed with maybe moments of closeness. And the tricky part here is that your nervous system it learns that love equals intensity and uncertainty. Now that's a problem because that's what that's what's going to start to feel familiar. And then we start to confuse love with survival bonding. You see, trauma bonds are created through inconsistency, uh, emotional unpredictability. It can be like these cycles of feeling really close with someone, and then suddenly there's a sudden withdrawal, right? And then affection that can suddenly be followed by criticism, silence, or feeling manipulated, gas, you know, gaslighting or feeling controlled. And so what happens is that in reality, your body does not experience this as romance. Your body experiences this as survival. And this is not even just um romance, this can be friendship as well. Keep in mind, it can be friendship as well, right? So a lot of these survival bonds, they're very powerful, and honestly, they can actually have their place that they serve, but they're not meant to serve you long term, right? And this is especially what I see with people who are friends. I see this happening a lot with people who are friends, and this is where two people meet, they connect, but that you know, there's a lot of trauma bonding happening, a lot of commonality, a lot of commonality in relationship to pain, shared pain that was experienced. But then sometimes also because of this pain, two people can also not show up towards one another in a healthy way, but because they understand this wounded understanding or familiarity of how unhealthy behavior might feel familiar, and then they can be like a trial period where it feels acceptable. But if one person starts to heal, they're gonna feel the incongruency of that, they're gonna feel how unhealthy that is, and then starting to feel that the dynamic is now a weight rather than this wounded support system, right? And the part that I see a lot of people don't understand is that trauma bonds, it actually lives in the body. There's not a lot of logic to it, and that's why it's hard to question it or try to think your way out of it. Because your nervous system actually learns early, and in most cases in your childhood, that love must be earned. Closeness is unpredictable, safety um disappears without warning. So when a relationship recreates those familiar emotional conditions, the body says, Oh, I feel I I this this this feels good, I I this feels familiar, this feels like home. Have you ever met someone and you both connected and click, wow, this we have the same stuff, this is great, and it feels like home. This can be a healthy dynamic still, but if you both heal and you don't project that wounded pain on one another, reinforcing the circuit of this feels familiar instead of realizing maybe this is unhealthy, even though it feels familiar, let's change it. Because normally these trauma bonding dynamics hold two people stuck in place, it feels familiar, but no healing stems from it. Right? So this is where it can get a little bit a little bit dicey, if if I can call it that way. So even when these dynamic, and then shooting back now, maybe if we start to tap a bit more on the romantic side of it, right? So even or even friendship. So it's almost like when this starts to hurt, it's because calm love can feel boring. That's why maybe a lot of healthy dynamics that can come is sabotaged or pushed away. I don't really relate to that person. There's not a lot of excitement there. Well, yes, what's your definition of excitement exactly? That's something to take note of, right? Because a lot of healthy partners, a lot of healthy friendships can feel very unattractive because chaos feels magnetic. There's fire, right? Because the nervous system is not looking for happiness, it's looking for familiarity. So when we look at living in a trauma bond that slowly teaches you to do what? Doubt your perception, abandon your needs, tolerate emotional pain as normal, and sometimes it can also confuse anxiety with passion. So a lot of people in trauma bonds say, I don't feel like myself anymore. I feel smaller, I'm exhausted, but I can't leave. You see, that exhaustion is not a weakness, it's the body being stuck in this in this constant emotional threat monitoring. It's exhausting. Yeah, it's exhausting. So trauma bonds do not, you know, it's not about breaking through willpower, they break through nervous system safety. So you don't actually break a trauma bond by forcing yourself to move on or shaming yourself for missing them. Um, especially one that I did was intellectualizing why they are bad for you. You see, you break trauma bonds actually by teaching your body that I am safe. I am safe without this person, and then that begins inside of you. That's very important to remember. And that also brings me to today's healing meditation. So when you are ready, I would love for you to sit down, lie down. Please don't drive or walk while you do this meditation. Maybe pause here when you have time to really take this in. So when you are ready, I invite you to start by taking a nice deep breath. And exhaling. And just notice now, let's just bring our full focus and awareness to your breath. Full focus and awareness to your breath. And notice as you do that, how that gentle, slow, consistent breathing is bringing you into the present moment. How you're almost feeling like something is just gently grounding you, just noticing your body, no matter what you're feeling at the moment, just give space to it, just let it be. We're just bringing our conscious awareness to our body. Notice how you might start to feel your heart bait without putting your hand on your heart. And remember, you are not here to force healing. You are here to perhaps learn how to move into a state, a mental, emotional, physical, spiritual state that allows safety with discernment. And I invite you now to place one hand on your chest and one hand on your lower belly. Feel the warmth of your own touch. Slowly inhale, and then a nice long exhale. And notice now as you're breathing with each exhale, imagine your body receiving a message, a message and clarity that there's no emergency right now. Your body may not fully believe it yet, and that's okay. We are gently teaching it, one breath at a time, one step at a time, one action at a time, and I invite you now to bring to your mind the person or relationship that you feel emotionally perhaps attached to or bound to. And I don't want you to relive memories. Just gently allow your thoughts to wander over the relationship dynamic. Where do you feel perhaps something surfacing in your body? Do you suddenly feel like a heavy wake blanket? Is there tension? Maybe sadness, it can also be an emotion. Any sensation. Notice that now. And you can say to it, I see you. You protected me once. But you don't. Have to work so hard anymore. And notice if your body softens, even just ever so slightly. And as you do, imagine a soft golden light around your body. And this light represents your emotional energy. Then I invite you now to imagine any energy that's tied to pain, fear, or longing, gently healed by this golden light, feeling how it's flowing deep, deep down to the root cause of this pain, this fear, or this longing. Feeling how that flow deeply moves through your spirit, your mind and your body. Remembering that this is not forced, it's released naturally by simply allowing it to. A dialogue that supports the intention of I release what hurts me. I release what hurts me. I invite you to bring your full focus and awareness to the bottom of your fate. And imagine that focus that there's a ball of light below your fate, with the cord going down to the core center of the earth. And notice now how all this pain, all the stress, all this negative energy within you, around you, is just suddenly moving down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down into the core of the earth, supporting you, releasing everything that you no longer need. Notice how it's bringing balance where there used to be imbalance. Notice as well how relieved your body starts to feel with the absence of this weight, of these cords that have been bothering you. How these cords are just released, and their attachments just gently draining to the core of the earth to be cleansed and released. Very good. And notice as you do, there's almost like a new sense of steadiness. I am safe in my own presence. I no longer need pain to feel connected. Connection can feel stable and safe. I choose relationships that feel safe, calm, and mutual, allowing these words to land in your body, not your mind, feel these words. And when you are ready, taking a nice deep breath. Noticing the surface beneath your body. Bringing your full focus and awareness to the bottom of your fate, anchoring your back into the earth, feeling fully grounded, balanced, and lighter. And when you feel ready, you can open your eyes and gently come back and also give yourself a nice big stretch. Remember that you are healing one step at a time, one breath at a time. And our affirmation for today is I am worthy of support and I feel free at the same time. So remember if this episode touched you, then please share it also with someone else, also on the healing journey. And as always, breathe deep, listen within, and stay gently curious. And until next time for our next episode, I love you. Have a beautiful day, and be delighted you are. Bye everyone.