People DON'T get THIS about TRAUMA BONDING

hey everyone it's Dr romeny and welcome back to this YouTube channel on narcissism and narcissistic relationships making sense of them healing from them we going to do another video on trauma bonding and this is meant to be more of a clarifier video on trauma bonding let's take this on so since I eat breathe live and sleep this the more I do this the more precise I keep trying to get on the language because I really do believe that the Precision helps people who are struggling with trauma bonding with narcissistic relationships right and this matters so much when it comes to trauma bonding which is already a term where there's a lot just like narcissism there's a lot of unsureness and we're not clear on it now in general when we think about trauma bonding we think about it Loosely as the alternation between good and bad that happens in a relationship that creates it that you hold out for the good day you ruminate or selectively recall the one decent hour from vacation you wonder why they all couldn't be that way but I think that that does not actually get it fully right because I know many of you feel very trauma bonded in at least one relationship however you also acknowledge that yeah Dr Romany this does not alternate between good and bad it sort of kind of either vacillates between abusive and kind of normal and good isn't even part of the equation so think about it in a trauma bonded relationship you may have for example a normal conversation with a narcissistic person about what you did that day or you might eat dinner together peacefully or you might attend a child's Sports your child sports game without much consternation or arguing or you might have a normal meeting at work or you might drop off something at your parents home and nobody gets into an argument I don't know that we'd quite call this good it's just sort of it's not bad it's just sort of normal right right however then later that day after your child sports game they may rage at you in the car or after that work meeting you might get that toxic passive aggressive email that night saying that you were missing details in your report that were not meeting and that you were told some other stuff that didn't make sense right before you were going to go to bed or your parent calls you and says that you are ungrateful for not taking them to the doctor now we've gone away from the normal is now we're in the more of the abusive space so in these cases you've alternated but what sort of a normal relationship and sort of bad and abusive Behavior okay I think we can call that bad but it's not between good and bad you aren't going before before back and forth between ecstasy or a fabulous trip or anything like that the good for many trauma bonded people is the normal this confuses people who are T who are listening and talking about trauma Bond because they'll say I don't think I'm alternating between good and bad I actually think I might just be alternating between abusive and not abusive and again this is something else entirely but this is more normally what happens in these relationships so I think really it may be much simpler to think of trauma bonding that that unbreakable attachment you have in an unhealthy relationship to think of that as being created by alternation and that alternation may be between good and bad bad and really bad normal and bad but the alternation May mean that a day when you're not yelled at is something you start to cherish and you may feel that the day that you are not yelled at is a sort of relief sadly that day you are not yelled at in your brain might get elevated to the idea of good which means good kind of gets effed up because it simply means then that the absence of Rage the absence of gaslighting or Betrayal on a day is good good may be that they didn't text the person that they are cheating on you with for the whole weekend so when good is this messed up it becomes its own part of the trauma bonded dynamic in fact very related to that idea of breadcrumbing now when we use that slot machine analogy I use all the time right we keep playing the slot machine right put our money in we get some small rewards put in a Buck maybe we get two we get a lot of times where we just keep putting the money in the machine GI keeps taking our money but we keep playing why do we keep playing we keep playing because we think we can win the jackpot the million dollars or whatever it is in a narcissistic relationship the jackpot is that they'll turn around and have empathy and not be mean and listen to you and be loving and patient and validating and kind and not betray you or lie to you and actually show up in a consistent manner that's the jackpot but there's another reason that we don't walk away from the machine what is it well one of them is the sunk cost fallacy we already put in so much time or money so we throw good money after bad you know I never remember which it is and we stick it out even when we're starting to go to the ATM to get more money I sort of think that the sunk cost fallacy is US gaslighting ourselves in the narcissistic relationship that is when we stick around stay in the relationship keep believing their future faking and the slot machine does that by taking you right to the edge cherries cherries candy bar dollar sign dollar sign Diamond no jackpot the narcissistic person promises stuff that won't happen kind of takes you right to the edge again and we also tell ourselves well maybe this will happen when they get the promotion or maybe things will get easier when the kids start school or maybe things will happen when they retire this not happening but there is one more reason we don't walk away and this is in interestingly the one that whenever I ask sister group nobody guesses what is the other reason we don't walk away sit with it think about it don't cheat don't look at the comments why because we think someone else will come and sit down at that slot machine that we have filled with our damn money and that that next person is going to hit the jackpot and hit it quick in essence take our stuff and in a narcissistic relationship that is the equivalent of being fearful that if we end the relationship that the next person's going to get the better version of them folks there is no better version just like that jackpot is probably not going to pay out of that slot machine when you walk away but all of that said the slot machine which is based on that intermittent reinforcement schedule I've talked about a few little payouts lots of no payouts a few larger payouts and the hope of a jackpot all sort of coming at you randomly is really really hard to let go of we know that as part of Behavioral Science right but here is where the narcissistic relationship is more messed up than a slot machine at least with the slot machine you are holding out for a big prize that could happen like lots of money it's not likely but maybe even if it's not the big jackpot it could be like a th000 bucks that's still pretty good right but not only is that win medium win or huge win not an option in a narcissistic relationship the narcissistic relationship ship may not really offer many rewards at all it may be all take sometimes it'll be even money in the relationship but the slot machine can't scream at you or hurt you or tell you that you are a loser or start giving the jackpot money or winnings from the machine to the person sitting next to you if the slot machine did that to us jackpot or no jackpot we would walk away from it and then tell the casino people the machine has gone Bonkers and is screaming at us and is giving our money away but yet we endure that from a narcissistic person so even the intermittent reinforcement of the narcissistic relationship the very thing that is a contributor biggest contributor to the trauma bond that back and forth is really the back and forth between bad and not as bad and in our minds we may turn not as bad to normal or good and in this way the trauma bonded Dynamic is something that is partly a result of the revisions we have to make in our minds to make sense of the relationship and this is particularly pronounced for children with narcissistic parents so just like you would do better all of us would do better not playing a slot machine at all but at least playing a slot machine is fun recognize that the trauma Bond may not just be between highs and lows but just lows and really lows and that is more than enough maybe even worse in keeping us stuck when you think about it the best way to play a slot machine is to set a limit for yourself you say I'm not going to play more than a hundred bucks and when it's gone I'm out think of what the equivalent to that would be in a narcissistic relationship how many betrayals how many invalidations how much loss how much disrespect has to mount up before you walk and just like that hundred bucks May last a minute because you might get a small few small wins the key is to know to walk when it runs out so maybe if you could set it to once I spend a 100 betrayals here I may need to walk out of this casino maybe that's the only way to address address these trauma bonded patterns and remember that it's not only highs and lows but it's bads and not so bads and not so bads that we convince ourselves are good that my friends is the trauma Bond thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 31,687

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Id: oWOyMHq1i7I

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2024