Trauma bonding

Trauma bonding isn’t love.. it’s loyalty to pain.
It’s the attachment that forms when fear, hope, and survival are all mixed into one emotional pattern.
Unhealed childhood wounds make us attach to familiarity, even when it hurts.
Emotional highs and lows feel like passion, but are actually trauma reactivation.

You don’t stay because you’re weak.
You stay because your nervous system has learned that chaos means connection, and silence feels unsafe.

The very person who wounds you becomes the one your body believes it needs for relief.
That’s how trauma turns love into repetition, while pain remains disguised as belonging.

Healing begins when you stop chasing regulation through another, and start creating safety within yourself.
Through awareness, grief, self-trust, and emotional re-regulation, you learn to connect again, without losing yourself in the process.

— David John