The body’s role in trauma bonding
If you’ve ever found yourself lost in a toxic relationship—knowing it’s harmful but feeling unable to leave—you’re not weak or foolish. You’re chemically hooked. Targets often lose their deep inner knowing and true sense of self and wonder how do I trust myself again?
Narcissistic emotional abuse doesn’t just warp your mindset—it hijacks your nervous system, causing the body to confuse danger with desire. As Dr Gabor Maté explains:
“For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood… stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.”
In other words, your body may long for what hurt you—simply because it feels familiar.
Why the Cycle Feels So Addictive
This “chemical loop” sustains trauma bonds:
- Adrenaline triggers that rush—the heart-pound when they text or that ache when they disappear
- Dopamine rewards tiny signs of approval, creating highly addictive unpredictability.
- Oxytocin bonds—even with harmful people, through touch, sex and closeness or shared moments. This is what bonds us to our babies and why sex is so powerful.
Together, they fuel a cycle of stress → reward → longing → crash → repeat—a painful neurological trap, not a failure of will.
How to Rebuild Trust in Yourself
1. Realise Your Nervous System Is Pattern Loyal
“Your nervous system isn’t confused. It’s ‘pattern loyal’ to past experiences.”
If love in your past was inconsistent or conditional, your system learned to chase emotional crumbs. This powerful conditioning is called intermittent reinforcement. This refers to a reinforcement schedule where a desired behaviour (such as affection or kindness) is not rewarded every time it occurs. Instead, rewards are given at unpredictable intervals. Extensive research has shown that this method is particularly effective in maintaining persistent behaviour (such as chasing affection or ”being good’), even when ‘rewards’ are increasingly more infrequent.
Explore how this type of trauma affects our survival responses in “How Trauma Operates in the Brain and Body”.
2. Letting Safety Feel….Boring?
If chaos was your baseline, safety may feel dull—but it’s a different kind of connection. A peaceful, quiet connection. Maybe it does feel boring….to begin with. Over time as your system learns that safety is nourishing it will begin to respond in a different more healthy way.
The feelings of safe love include:
- A soft jaw, calm belly and settled sensations
- Steady breath, steady heartbeat
- Genuine playfulness without tension
- No emotional hangover or questioning confusion
This is attraction without heightened awareness or collapse.
Its important to take steps so that your nervous system starts to recognise this as genuine safety. Perhaps to begin with you just sit with this idea. Could it be possible? This is a process and can also be helped through movement practices, exercise or somatic therapeutic approaches.
3. Use a Nervous System Compatibility Check
The first step might be to pause the next time you feel drawn to someone, and ask:
- Can I breathe easily around them?
- Is my body soft or guarded?
- Am I grounded, or buzzing and performing?
- Am I being real—or managing the situation?
This isn’t overthinking. It’s somatic intelligence. Read more in Trauma Bonds: Breaking the Addiction to Toxic Relationships where I explain how oxytocin and dopamine work in unhelpful bonds.
4. Be Kind When You Feel That Pull
That craving to fix someone, earn their approval, or tame chaos—it might just be your nervous system going back to old trigger patterns that kept you safe from:
- A parent’s mood swings
- An ex’s emotional rollercoaster
- A childhood caretaking role during silence or volatility
Familiar = Safe, though it can feel that way. Embrace your response with compassion—and remember: you can rewire your system.
Start With the Body and maybe the mind will follow?
You don’t heal trauma bonds through thought alone—you also heal them through the body. That’s why, along with Integrated Psychology I offer advanced somatic practices to help your nervous system rediscover calm, safety, and self‑trust.
When your body leads, connection feels different—not based on chaos, but on presence and regulation.
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