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SalingerEsme · Nov 12, 2019 at 03:14 PM

First, I am aways so glad when you talk about the PC group being of help to you. It is to me too.

I am also saddened for all the heartbreak you found in therapy, the discouragement and sense of nonacceptance.

I agree about the trauma bond. My T and I are seeing this with us, and trying to overcome, but it is more powerful than any ocean undertow. The other idea that resonates is that the roles of perpetrator, victim, and bystander have an allure when therapy has one or two traumatized individuals, and they will unconsciously entice each other into different roles at different times:

Quote:

In Trauma Bonding, trauma fuses a bond between the abuser and victim in which the two replay their original trauma. The abuser asserts his/her power over the victim, causing a life-altering love/hate relationship between them. The victim often experiences this power differential by confusing abuse with a sense of love and caring. When this kind of bonding occurs, victims are in danger of moving closer to the person exploiting them, a very natural and common reaction to trauma.

The hope here is that some time during the replay, one or both wake up and see it, call it out, and intentionally do things to combat it together.

Quote:

Originally Posted by here today

I've harped on/around this topic for awhile, and about my absence, loss, or damage to the ability to generate a sense of authentic self which therapy did not "cure" or resolve.

Several things in this forum seem to be helping, though, as well as the fact that I have been able recently to feel that my son authentically cares about me. Not sure about my daughter -- there's probably damage there, too, to her own, came down the whole family line. Sucks. They did their best, I've done mine. There needs to be more authentic help for people who would really like to do better.

A couple of things that seem important for/to me, may be important/relevant to others with (somewhat) similar issues>

1. Trauma bonds, which koru_kiwi mentioned in a recent post and which I think I can see in some recent stories here and in another subforum, and therefore/maybe see better in myself as well. Why is it so hard for anyone to see these things, emotionally? Because even if we see them intellectually, sort of, the "person" who might really "see", if they had eyes, is hidden away, for safety. Good g. . , this is hard.

Here's a link I found last night which is interesting. Simplisitic, makes it easy to understand:

Trauma Bonds: Why People Bond To Those Who Hurt Them | New Leaf Center

Seems that I likely replicated trauma bonds, and other effects?, from my family or origin in the (endless) therapies. Addiction and co-dependency, as the article mentions and which I had already identified in myself independently.

From the article:

2. How many other therapy clients experience similar things? Seems like anyone with a trauma background is at risk, with therapists who haven't done enough of "their own work", who are drawn to working with clients like us because we feed their own egos, which were similarly damaged by trauma, and because dealing with the absence or lack or loss of whatever it is so d. . . hard. The whole therapy enterprise seems set up to exploit this -- come to us, you poor traumatized people, we'll help you!

I'm convinced this morning that having someone in the real world who, somehow, a person can feel confident really cares about them is key to allowing the whatever it is that was lost/damaged to start to regrow or re-develop. That's not in any 50-minute hours necessarily and no way I could look for something I hadn't had and didn't know how to find.