practical steps to breaking a trauma bond 🫶🫶 #narcissisticabuse #redflags #emotionalabuse

if everybody in your life is telling you to just move on from the narcissist, they clearly don't understand what emotional abuse does to your brain. Because if it were that simple, you would already be gone and over them. This isn't about you being weak. This is about you being conditioned. So let's actually break it down and break the trauma bond in a way that helps you. Number one, you have to cut access. Go as no contact or as low contact as humanly possible. If you co-parent with them and you need to speak, you use an app that really minimizes the kind of tone that you're using, the amount of words that you're using. Stop checking their socials, stop rereading text messages, emails, stop looking at old pictures, stop looking for signs because every hit of them, even a tiny one, resets the cycle. And trauma bonds are a lot like detoxing from a drug. So if you think about it like that, yeah, you could go back for one last hit. It would feel good in the moment, but it would extend your withdrawal period. It would extend your healing journey. Number two, stop turning a pattern into a puzzle. If you keep thinking, oh, if I just figure them out, this will make sense. It won't. Their behavior might feel confusing. When in reality, it's very consistent. And that consistency is the answer. Number three, write down what actually happened. Keep a truth file somewhere in your phone that you can look at when you start romanticizing or rewriting history. Don't write the potential. Don't write the almost right what actually happened. Write the facts because your brain is going to rewrite it later to make it easier to go back. Your brain wants to protect you. Your brain seeks relief. Number four, expect withdrawal. You're going to miss them. You're going to think about texting them. That doesn't mean you should. Urges are not commands. They're just signals. A signal that you need comfort, a signal that you need relief. You don't have to get that through them anymore. Your brain is used to the cycle of highs, then the crash, and then the relief afterwards. And right now it's looking for that next hit. Which brings me to step five. Replace the pattern. You can't just remove them and then sit in silence. You need structure. You need routine. You need people to rally around you. You need something steady that your nervous system can start to trust again. So you're not struggling to move on. on your breaking and addiction to a pattern that felt like love.