Shadowboxing Trauma

I couldn’t decide what to title this blog. But it covers:

The Last Challenge of the Trauma Bond (the shock to the system of realizing you can be in a real loving relationship…) and….

The Origin of: “Nice Guys Finish Last.” (but it happens to women too)

I have said many times that the trauma bond is addiction, and it is Stockholm syndrome, period.

Over the years, I have watched hundreds of you try to break the trauma bond, whether after abuse, after divorce, or after the end of a romantic relationship, only to keep falling off the wagon over and over again, going back to your abuser or moving into a new relationship with the same abuser in a different body.

What I have come to realize is how much these individuals need abuse in their lives because it stokes dopamine within them. It gives them that high, that rush, so they can get their drug, get their fix. They always have to go to a new dealer, and yes, by that I mean a new drug dealer.

I used to make a joke about this, and by the way, I was not really joking. I used to theorize that maybe the only way some of these people could ever be in a loving relationship would be to choose a loving partner and say to their new partner, “You go ahead and treat me like a queen. Be loving, be tender, be my protector. But I need you to understand something. Every Friday at 6:30 PM, for the rest of our lives, I am going to need you to scream at me, yell at me, start a massive fight, throw things, and get damn near violent. Maybe even storm out of the house after all of that like you are leaving me, just so I can get my fix. Then we can continue this wonderful, loving relationship.”

After all these years of theorizing about this, sharing that theory, and even joking about it, even though I truly was not kidding, I am starting to realize that I may have been completely right.

                                                                                                                     — Shannon Goertz

Part II

The arrival of love should ostensibly always be a matter of celebration. Especially after surviving divorce or the collapse of a long term relationship. Imagine that finally, after years of waiting, along comes what might be called a genuinely nice person. They are mature. They apologize for their flaws. They listen. They ask questions. They take an interest. They are generous.

A new couple goes on a number of holidays, perhaps to Cancun first, then a weekend in Fredericksburg, followed by a trip to Norway. Introductions are made to best friends, to children, to an aunt, to a brother in law.

There is laughter, some great sex, deep conversations, and a sense at last of having come home.

But in the background of one of the two parties, the lover who is fearful of love, there is also a very slow rising discomfort.

For a time, this discomfort is managed through strategic lowering of the temperature. There is an argument on the steps of a museum that ruins one afternoon. Then a mysterious bout of so called illness that cancels a few dinners. Then an urgent need to see a friend that shatters the intimacy of a weekend. Then a pressing need to attend a course or fix a shelf.

These are subtle attempts to ensure that love cannot deepen, that dependence is stymied, that a home is carefully dismantled at the very moment it appears to be going up.

Consider an analogy. A person is taken prisoner early in life during a time of terrible war. In the prison camp there is barely any food. The young prisoner grows up having to adapt to an extreme calorie control diet. There is little nourishment and the stomach shrinks to accommodate what is available.

Then suddenly there is peace. The prison gates open. It is liberation day.

There is joy and celebration. A banquet is laid out. Chocolate tarts, creamy cheeses, lush fruits, dried meats. Yet the banquet is wholly indigestible to the prisoners. The goodness cannot be metabolized.

Something comparable has happened to the lover who cannot love. They too were neglected, perhaps by a mother who was mentally unwell or a father filled with rage who later ran off or married someone else. This does not even include the stories of those who endured multiple step parental figures or became aware of repeated infidelities within their childhood homes.

The lover was never fed.

Their emotional stomach has shrunk. They dream of banquets, as the deprived always do, but they will retch at the sight of one.

                                                                                                                     — Alain De Botton

And there it is. Another one of my theories.

If someone has never been loved unconditionally, if someone has never been cherished or protected, never experienced affection, never had a love they could absolutely count on, a love that would be there no matter what, and if they have been so hurt going back to childhood that the belief becomes love always leaves me, it never works out, I never knew my father, or mommy ran off with her new boyfriend, then something begins to form very early on.

They enter relationship after relationship after relationship, trying to fix a parent who was never there, but attempting to fix that wound through a romantic relationship with someone else, which is never going to work.

Then, in theory, it would make sense. Think about all that pain they had to endure. (?)

Now imagine they become acutely aware that true love, unconditional love, actually does exist, and they have finally found it. At first, and for a good year, maybe more, they would be in absolute heaven, like a new drug.

But at some point, it is going to dawn on them. Wait a second….????

My past is years and years of pain, pain that I barely survived. And now I have found out that true love really does exist. But that would mean that if something were to happen, and I were to lose this specific, real, beautiful love, I would not survive.

The pain would be one thousand times magnified compared to the pain I have already endured throughout my life.

So I guess I better kill this in the head right now. I need to sabotage it, because my partner is going to leave eventually anyway. Love always leaves me.

                                                                                                                           — Shannon Goertz

Part III

Gradually a conclusion forms in the emotionally undernourished partner’s mind. They must get out, and quickly. Their lover is not, despite appearances, very nice at all. They are controlling. They do not have the other’s best interests at heart. They are not really interested in listening.

These accusations bear the imprint of their opposites. They can be read as desperate, confused pleas from the unconscious mind of the unwell lover.

What on earth is one meant to do with kindness. What in heaven’s name is one meant to do with trust. How can one handle goodness.

These are desirable but entirely alien properties, and they trigger an acute unconscious fear of loss.

What would happen if this new real love were to be snatched away. How could one survive such a disappearance now. It would quite literally feel as though it would kill them.

Better then to instigate loss oneself than to see it unfold outside of one’s control.

I must fire rather than be fired. I must deny the legitimacy of love to prevent dependence from growing.

The lover who is terrified of love begins to prime the explosives:

An affair. 🧨

A grave rupture of trust.🧨

A disappearance.🧨

A canceled holiday.🧨

Silence online.🧨

And they are ready with an answer if questioned by the incensed, terrified partner. It is your fault. You are complaining about nothing. You have a bad temper. You do not listen to my needs. And then they are gone.

In a classic so called avoidant discard, a relationship can be destroyed in a matter of days, sometimes hours.

Social media profiles are changed instantly.

The lover who is afraid of love may be back on the dating scene in minutes.

The now ex is erased from history, airbrushed out like a Soviet era leader.

The love never happened.

The lover was too intense. It would never have worked. They were controlling.

It takes a very steady mind indeed not to fracture at this point when one is on the receiving end of this.

One is being told to go away on the grounds of something one has not done by someone one adores who is denying that they are up to anything.

We need to remember some core truths.

We have been discarded because love is terrifying to those who were not loved as children.

We have been thrown away not because we were horrible, but because we were not horrible enough.

We have been punished for caring for people who do not, in their core, in any way feel worthy of care.

                                                                                                                    — Alain De Botton

So what the hell is anyone supposed to do about it???

If all of this is true, and it is true, then the answer is not to recreate abuse in a controlled environment. That would be like giving a cocaine addict fake cocaine and calling it recovery.

No one heals by simulating chaos. No one heals by scheduling fights, yelling, or emotional explosions and pretending they do not mean anything. That is not healing. That is maintenance of the addiction.

What actually has to happen is far more uncomfortable. There are 2 solutions.

#1….

The nervous system has to be retrained to tolerate peace. To tolerate kindness without suspicion. To tolerate love without bracing for impact. To stay present when there is no adrenaline, no spike, no crash.

Healthy love does not feel like fireworks to a traumatized nervous system. It feels unfamiliar. Sometimes boring. Sometimes frightening. Sometimes empty.

And the work is not learning how to love better.

The work is learning how to survive love without destroying it.

THAT is the real withdrawal.

#2 the brain must be rewired and there is only one way to do such a thing….