Each of us is on his or her own wonderful journey called life. Through this journey, there are inevitably some encounters that will jar us, and some that will scar us. After these moments have long passed, their residual effects often times linger on. But we won’t always notice it.
There are moments in life wherein we have found ourselves doing something commonly referred to as ‘trauma bonding’. This is mostly associated with romantic relationships, but these types of relationships exist platonically, as well. Loosely, the relationships are developed as a result of some common pain that you and another person or group of people share. There is a common ground derived from similar traumatic experiences to allow you to relate to one another. If you don’t seek out these relationships with intentionality for healing, and you find yourself amongst “friends” with whom you share misery, you may find yourself going in a downward spiral of self-sabotage. Typically, trauma bonding results in toxicity. Evidence of trauma can manifest in relationships loudly or quietly. People affected have experienced neglect, abuse, invalidation, or abandonment, and as result, exhibit coercive control, sabotage, and manipulation, to name a few toxic points [1]. Those experiences are at the helms of their actions and reactions. To put it succinctly: Hurt people hurt people.
Living life with a clearer scope of joy starts within. You must be willing to admit that there are some issues that need to be addressed, and take the time and do the work to begin to slowly clean your lens to allow you to experience things without trauma obstructing your view. Doing the work within eventually allows you to naturally protect your energy that you’ve worked so hard to freshen.
Being conscious of and intentional about selecting your circle of friends allows you to assess whether you stand to glean anything from those groups. On its face, this seems like the concept of being a ‘user’. However, it is becoming more socially acceptable to approach the development and maintenance of many types of relationships, personal and professional, as requiring that there be at least some mutual benefit. Ever heard of being the smartest person in the room? Well, unless you’re a mentor, that room is never going to be conducive to your growth in any capacity. Usually, people who are in a mentally and emotionally healthy space in life seek out relationships to ‘happy bond’ (not sure if that’s a thing). They choose happy.
When we trauma bond, we stunt our growth by dwelling in negative spaces and places, and by repeating negative cycles. Don’t get me wrong – there is a time and a place and appropriate people who should be in your life to allow you to vent your frustrations and learn from your experiences. Unless those are relationships established solely for the purpose of mutual growth, however, only having a misery partner drains both people. All it takes is for one of those people to become enlightened about his or her energy, and to take action. How that action is received can be problematic. Even more importantly, if you are someone who is already in a healed place, and you respond to a person in a broken place in any way besides bonding through trauma, it is possible, if not likely, that your good intentions are received negatively.
Through my own personal experiences, I have had countless interactions in new and in well-established relationships wherein I have to check myself. Someone could have the best intentions or maybe even no specific intentions, and I, at times, found myself leaning towards a perception that is tried and true through the lens of trauma. Every now and then, I have to take a beat, and ask myself, “Is your intuition or your trauma taking the lead?” [2] . In doing so, I circumvent certain default thinking and actions rooted in my past.
After many personal conversations spanning friendships and acquaintances across several walks of life, there is something in common. Significant trauma allows pain to be established as the norm. It takes real time to be able to overcome the trauma that has persisted in any one person’s life. Until that healing occurs, that person will continue to select relationships that resemble the relationships that he or she saw and/or experienced in the past. That person will also subconsciously pass that trauma along intergenerationally. For women, for example, the importance of minimizing distressful experiences and surrounding oneself with positive energy and positive experiences during pregnancy to ensure the protection of the fetus is commonly known. In its purest form, this perfectly exemplifies that pain passes when left unchecked.
Have you checked your scope of joy?