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How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Break the habit of feeling insecure, envious, and discontented with your life.

By Dr. Susan Biali Haas, Ph.D | Posted March 5, 2018

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

—Theodore Roosevelt

Who do you most frequently compare yourself to?

If you’re not sure, try this question: Who have you compared yourself to in the last 24 hours?

If you’re still not sure, think of the last time you checked your Facebook or Instagram feed. Which updates made you feel envious, or made you feel as if your life paled in comparison? In turn, did any posts make you feel smug, or better than that person?

The comparison game—or war—is as old as humanity.

I avoid mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds as much as possible. As part of my work (I speak and write about wellness, resilience, burnout and mental health), I read the studies that show that time on social media feeds increases depression and envy and decreases well-being. This motivates me to use social media purposefully, specifically choosing what I will look at and keeping it to a minimum.

I almost always regret it when I let my guard down and start scrolling. I’ll inevitably see something that makes me feel bad about myself or my life, or something else that makes me feel envious, that I’m missing something from my life that others have (something I probably wasn't even thinking of until I saw it). I posted about the comparison trap the other day on Facebook, and a senior citizen posted a comment that made my heart ache:

“Reading about everyone’s vacations kills me. Not in my budget, ever. And these posts never stop.”

I’ve written previously about developing awareness about the impact of your social media posts on others. I stopped posting pictures from my vacations years ago. Share those, perhaps, with a limited audience, maybe close family and friends who really want to see them. But…ask yourself first if they really want to see them. Before you show anything to anyone, review what you know about their life. When’s the last time they went on a tropical vacation? Maybe they dream of going to the tropics but have never had (and may never have) the opportunity. You’d be surprised how many people don’t actually enjoy pictures of you lounging by a clear blue sea with a coconut drink in your hand.

Back to Roosevelt’s quote about comparison being the thief of joy. In addition to cultivating awareness with respect to inadvertently (or advertently) provoking comparison and therefore stealing the joy of others, become a student of how you squander your own contentedness by getting sucked into the comparison trap.

Here are some tips:

1. Become aware of, and avoid, your triggers.

Start noticing the situations that cause you to play the comparison game. Social media, as I’ve mentioned, is a big one for most of us. What about other circumstances? Is there a certain person who is constantly bragging about this or that, or asks you questions about your life that are designed to make you feel inferior? Are there certain activities, such as strolling through a high-end shopping mall, or driving through an expensive neighborhood, that frequently make you feel discontented with your life (when you were feeling just fine about your life, an hour before)?

Make a list of who and what you frequently envy or compare yourself to. Write how each negatively affects you, and why it’s actually a waste of your time. Resolve to catch yourself next time. Avoid comparison triggers if you can, especially if the activity or contact doesn’t add meaning or any real value to your life.

2. Remind yourself that other people’s “outsides” can’t be compared to your “insides”

This is such a helpful habit to cultivate. Unless you’re really close to someone, you can’t use their outward appearance to judge the reality of their life. People carefully curate the social media versions of their lives, and do the same with the lives they live out publicly. You may have had the experience, as I have, of being shocked when a couple that appeared to be happy and solid announce their divorce. Continue to wish others well, of course, but in the event that their life gives you reason to feel bad about yours, remind yourself that you don’t actually know what goes on behind closed doors.

3. Repeat whenever necessary: “Money doesn’t buy happiness, and never will”

It’s well established that wealth, beyond having the basics in life, isn’t associated with increased happiness or well-being. I used to perform flamenco dance at an exclusive resort frequented by celebrities and the mega-wealthy, and a manager there once told me that she’d never seen so many unhappy people in her life. Money and things provide temporary boosts of joy; their inevitable inability to provide lasting sustenance is usually more disappointing than anything else.

4. Be grateful for the good in your life, and resist any lies that shout “It’s not enough”

If you commit yourself to being deeply grateful for what’s good in your life, and remind yourself of it daily, you’ll be far less vulnerable to comparison and envy. If someone or something triggers that ugly feeling of negative comparison, stop and remind yourself of what’s good in your life, right now. There is so much.

5. Use comparison as motivation to improve what actually matters

This human propensity to want what others have is such a waste of time, unless what you see and “covet” in another is something of deep worth, such as their generosity or kindness. Who do you admire? What kinds of comparisons might actually be healthy for you? For example, there are women I know well who are extraordinarily kind and generous wives, mothers, and friends. They truly make a difference in their worlds, and I want to be more and more like them. Who inspires you to live better, in the way that matters most? Spend your precious time and thoughts on this, instead.

Imagine if you could elevate the comparison game to a useful art form. Stop falling prey to its dark underbelly, which does little more than increase feelings of misery and lack in your life. Use comparison, instead, to become a better person and maybe even make your little corner of the world a better place.

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The Stress of Social Comparison

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD | Updated on November 26, 2020

Social comparison is a common human dynamic that first rears its head when children are very small, in the days of toddlers wanting whatever toy is in the hands of the kid next to them. It gains momentum in elementary school when kids follow fads, and it’s noticed when someone isn’t watching the same shows or playing the same games as everyone else.

Overview

High school, the world of brand names, popular music, cliques and “fear of missing out” is when social comparison really takes hold, and it never quite goes away as people focus on getting into the better colleges, landing the better jobs, marrying someone their friends might envy, and building a picture-perfect life with them. When someone has kids, they rejoin the cycle through them.

Adults face many of the same social comparison pressures as teens to one degree or another: comparing looks, social status, material items, even relationships.

Comparing ourselves to each other is a natural human behavior that has evolved to help us live together as a cohesive group, to help us learn from one another, and to keep us from falling too far behind our potential.

It also helps us to define ourselves, to gauge how we’re doing in various areas of life based on what appears to be possible, and can even seem to help us feel better about ourselves in many cases. It can also be stressful, however, and it can make us more competitive than we need to be.

Research

Researchers have identified two types of social comparison: upward social comparison, where we look at people we feel are better off than we are in an attempt to become inspired and more hopeful, and downward social comparisons, where we look at people who we feel are worse off than we are, in an effort to feel better about ourselves and our situation.

These comparisons aren’t always bad for us, but they can sometimes be less helpful than we think they will be, and at times they are truly bad for our happiness and stress levels. Some of the factors that affect whether social comparisons are helpful or harmful are our self-esteem, the stressors we already have in our lives, and whether we’re making upward or downward social comparisons.

Risk Factors

People who have higher self-esteem and fewer stressors in their lives tend to fare better with social comparisons. For example, generally speaking, when we make downward social comparisons and compare ourselves to those who are less well-off, it generally makes us feel better.

However, those with high self-esteem experience a greater bump. Those with lower self-esteem, or who experience greater threats or stress in their lives, tend to use downward comparisons more often. This can lift their mood, but not as much as it does in those who are already doing better in these areas.

Upward social comparisons—comparing ourselves to those who are better off as a way to get inspired—can make us feel just that: inspired. Those who are going on diets can use pictures of people who embody their physical goals and feel more motivated.

Those who are working hard in business can have a role model they strive to emulate, and feel clearer on their path. However, those who have lower self-esteem or have recently experienced a setback can feel worse when they make upward social comparisons, experiencing both a drop in mood and often an increase in stress.

Comparisons Create Stress

Social comparison comes in many forms. Basically, whenever people gather, we have a tendency to compare ourselves and usually form some sort of hierarchy, formal or unspoken. Clubs have officers who are elected and awards that are given to those who excel, and most people are aware of the more influential members.

Moms’ groups compare their babies’ milestones and their relationships both in an effort to be sure their kids are progressing and to measure their own success as moms. From the high achievers to those looking for friends and fun, we tend to compare.

These comparisons can stress us, however, as we may find ourselves lacking when we make upward social comparisons. We may come off as conceited or competitive when we make downward social comparisons, which can create stress in our relationships.

Impact of Social Media

Social media has taken the social comparison to a whole new level in the last several years. We see who is doing what we’re not, and we may become stressed wondering if we’re doing enough, earning enough, enjoying life enough. We compare our regular lives with other people’s curated best memories. We don't know whether they’re just posting their highlights and the best photos out of dozens, or if they’re really sharing casual and spontaneous events as they happen.

Either way, many people find that social media exacerbates social comparison in all the worst ways, making many of us feel worse about ourselves, and research seems to back this up. This happens in casual, real-life scenarios as well.

Have you noticed yourself feeling happy for a friend when you hear their good news, but a twinge of regret for yourself that you’re not experiencing the same good fortune? Conversely, have you found yourself feeling a tiny jolt of satisfaction when you hear someone else has fallen down a bit, experiencing some misfortune that makes you feel luckier in comparison?

While these feelings can sometimes be automatic, we don’t need to let our instincts toward social comparison be an important part of who we are. We can minimize these tendencies and counteract them with a little effort so we feel less stressed by them. The first step, however, is being aware of social comparison in ourselves and in others.

Competitive Friends

Competitive friends can work in our favor if they're competing against themselves and supporting us to compete against ourselves, or if they playfully push us to reach our potential.

If you feel judged, if you feel your friend is upset when you succeed and happy when you fail, or if you feel pushed too hard, this is not a friendship that is competitive in a healthy way.

Clearly, it’s best to have friends (and to be friends) who are only happy for one another’s success and to offer support rather than claim subtle superiority when friends experience setbacks. This can take a little effort, but it’s worth it in terms of the stress we save ourselves by eliminating competitiveness and replacing it with camaraderie.

Possible Benefits

There is a positive aspect to competitiveness and social comparison, of course. When our friends are all doing well, they inspire us to be our best as well, which is the upside of upward social comparison. (This is particularly true if they share the secrets of their success.)

And when we compare ourselves to others who have it worse than us, we tend to appreciate what we have. We realize that we could be in a worse position. We feel more grateful and we often experience more empathy as well.

We often do better if we’re striving to keep up with a role model or successful friend, and we can make ourselves better by supporting others.

Even the desire to avoid the embarrassment of failure can be a good motivator. The main difference in friendly competition and the competition of “frenemies” is the supportiveness factor. Frenemies seem to delight in one-upmanship and the failure of others. True friends, on the other hand, motivate you to succeed, delight in your successes, and help keep you going in tough times.

How to Free Yourself

If you find yourself in the trap of social comparison, feeling somewhat hooked on feelings of superiority from downward social comparison or beating yourself up when you make upward social comparisons, it's important to get out of this mental trap. Here are some simple ways you can train your brain to care less about what others are doing or thinking:

Find Role Models

If you’re working to keep up with role models, you can gain the benefits of their success (personal motivation, seeing what works for them, etc.) without adding the element of competitiveness to your own relationships. It’s easier to learn from a role model like Oprah Winfrey or Elon Musk than to learn from a friend In your own life without eventually feeling “less than” when they constantly achieve more.

Create a Support Circle

It’s easier to avoid competitive friends or frenemies if you create a circle of supportive people and focus on them. This can be a group of friends who share a common goal. You can start a diet club, an exercise group, or another group built around a goal that’s either formal or informal. Or join a structured group, like Weight Watchers, or sign up for a group training session at the gym.

Partner Up

You can also find a “buddy” to share motivation with. Rather than a group, you and your “goal buddy” can check in with each other on your goals, celebrate together, and help motivate one another to stick with the plan.

This is particularly helpful because it provides both of you with individualized moral support, a bit of added responsibility to stick with the plan (or you’ll be letting your partner and yourself down), and it makes celebrating small victories a little more fun.

Count Your Blessings

When you find yourself making comparisons, try to “even the score” in your head. If you’re feeling envious of someone else’s victory, remind yourself of your own triumphs and strengths. If you’re feeling judgmental, remind yourself of the strengths of the other person and the special things they bring to the table.

It also helps to maintain an ongoing gratitude journal so you stay in the frame of mind of counting your blessings rather than what you lack. This also helps you to stay focused on your own life and not the lives of others.

Cultivate Altruism

There are many benefits of altruism, so cultivating it as a habitual thought pattern can be even better for you than for those who benefit from your kindness. See what small things you can do for your friends and strangers. Practice loving-kindness meditation. Be your best self and you won’t feel as prone to compare.

Avoid Frenemies

If you have people in your environment who seem to constantly judge and compare, it’s okay (and even preferable) to avoid them. You may not be able to cut them out of your life entirely, but you can minimize contact and steer the conversation to neutral topics when you do see them. You can also minimize competitively comparing tendencies in yourself, and they may follow in kind.

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TRAUMA BONDING: HOW TO RELEASE A TRAUMA BOND

By Irena @ NatashaAdamo.com

You may feel pretty crazy over there in your trauma bonded trance for someone who mistreated you, but know there are people actually eating dirt out there and making more sense than some of the well-meaning advice I heard while I was getting over various forms of heartbreak.

We are told to stop fixating, face the fear of moving on, focus on yourself, and that time heals all wounds. When in fact, the symptoms of a traumatic reaction to a trauma bond make these very things feel nearly impossible.

What’s more, when taken in the context of trauma bonding, prolonged grief over the loss of a relationship is far from irrational, even when that relationship was a toxic one. If you feel more stunned and immobilized as time wears on, this is the reaction of your organism actually working to protect you from a perceived, ongoing threat.

You are not crazy. Your body’s physiological state is just trying to communicate with you in a way that you may not quite understand yet.

There are people all over the world who experience cravings for dirt or clay. This is called geophagy and clearly sounds so insane that people feel ashamed to admit their cravings. Yet research has found that these cravings may indicate a lack in bodily mineral content or may function as the body’s protective response to pathogens in pregnant women or children. The content of dirt or clay may serve as a protective barrier in the stomach.

What may FEEL mentally and physiologically irrational, actually makes sense. This does not mean that anemic people should make themselves a nice dirt snack with their coffee this afternoon. It does mean that feeling estranged, ashamed, and ignoring the REALITY of the craving, without looking further into what it indicates, will never resolve their organism’s unmet need.

What is trauma bonding?

I only started to understand trauma bonding when I stopped feeling ashamed and started trusting my body’s own physiological messengers.

Breaking a trauma bond can feel agonizing. What’s the point of trying to accept the reality of a toxic relationship, go no contact, and try to move on with your life when you only feel worse as time wears on?

Breaking a trauma bond comes with intense withdrawal symptoms, flashbacks, cravings for the toxic person, compulsive thoughts about what happened, and an anxious state that may make you feel like you are going backward, without abate.

This is going to sound counterintuitive at first, but these very symptoms are confirmation that staying away from the toxic relationship is absolutely imperative to your health. This is because trauma resides as a physiological response to a perceived threat. Your organism knows and reacts, at the core, gut, and instinctual level, when a person or situation is harmful.

And while you may be fully consciously aware NOW that you are no longer in the relationship, your body is still registering an ongoing threat. This is manifesting in symptoms that certainly make you feel like you are going crazy — or maybe even make you feel as if you were never meant to stay away in the first place.

But all this DOES NOT mean that your body is trying to indicate to you that you are forever cosmically tied to that dirtbag who mistreated you, used you, and broke your heart. It means that the trauma that may have occurred before the relationship, during the relationship, and when the relationship ended, continues to live inside of you. It continues to live as a memory and echo that has no orientation to time and place.

You are feeling this way because, physiologically, you still don’t feel safe.

You will NOT be the person who longs for the person who mistreated you forever. But it’s going to be hard to get there if your strategy is to grit your teeth, brace yourself, and steel even more energy in trying to fight your body’s frantic physiological responses to the trauma in the trauma bond, through sheer will, when you are already frozen in emergency mode.

Stay with me. I’ll explain.

We look into trauma bonding as a way to explain, romanticize, and decode the characteristics of a relationship that feels or once felt so precious.

Here’s the gut-punch that usually gets lost —when you’re in a trauma bond, and the bond “breaks,” the trauma remains.

If you’re a cookie in an Oreo and the other cookie leaves, guess who is stuck with what seems like even more trauma filling than you started with?

This “trauma filling” can help to explain why your mind, body, and soul are registering a frenetic, obsessive, red level, emergency breaker craving for a toxic ex, toxic relationship, or situation.

The Trauma Bond

The reason for this hyper-aroused-anxiety-trance lies in some part to the nature of trauma bonding itself. Trauma bonds are formed when your organism registers that you are in danger.

According to “The Betrayal Bond,” a book written by Patrick Carnes, who developed this concept, “trauma bonds are the dysfunctional attachments that occur in the presence of danger, shame, or exploitation. Trauma bonds occur when we are bonding to the very person who is the source of danger, fear, and exploitation.” They involve seduction, betrayal, and high intensity.

They also involve a seemingly endless sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Carnes wrote, “This type of bonding does not facilitate recovery and resilience but rather undermines those very qualities within us.”

Throughout the relationship, your organism assessed the threat and continuously mobilized energy for you to fight or flee. Yet the trauma in trauma bonding creates a cyclical, repetitive cycle that contains your ability to protect yourself, trust yourself, feel your body’s physiological reactions or evolve out of your current state, even when your partner is gone.

Instead of fighting or fleeing, you remain frozen and clinging with an “insane level of loyalty, to an impossible, unresolvable, toxic, overwhelming, or cosmically doomed bond.” A person chained to this type of bond “disbelieves the obvious and accepts the impossible.”

The following are some signs of trauma bonding, which I’ve adapted from Carnes:

When you continue to be fixated on people who hurt you and who are no longer in your life.

When you crave contact with someone who has hurt you and who you know will cause you more pain.

When you continue to revolve around people who you know are taking advantage of you or exploiting you.

When you are committed to remaining loyal to someone who has betrayed you, even though their actions indicate few signs of change.

When you are desperate to be understood, validated, or needed by those who have indicated they do not care about you.

When you go to great lengths to continue to help, caretake, or consider people who have been destructive to you.

These types of relationships capitalize on old wounds and previous traumas.

As a bigger and separate topic, there are a lot of reasons for why we may be vulnerable to trauma bonding, to begin with, including a deep desire to heal a prior hurt. We do this by subconsciously recreating the prior situation, down to the very exploitative, dangerous, or shameful elements that existed in the prior trauma. Down to the type of toxic, emotionally unavailable, or developmentally stunted person in the prior situation.

The reasons why we get into these types of bonds, the reasons we stay, and the reasons why we can’t let them go are interrelated, and at least one thing remains the same: our body stores these memories physiologically, without a time or date stamp. The memories can make us feel like we are in an endless cycle of trauma and pain, with or without the relationship.

The Trauma

Trauma is a big concept, that lives on much developing academic ground. I’m no expert, and what I’m saying is informed by the work of trauma researchers Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, and Patrick Carnes, but this is simply my interpretation.

Viewing your seemingly irrational reactions to heartbreak through a trauma-informed lens will reduce some part of the shame that comes with continuing to live in a body that is suspended in a hyper-aroused and frenetic state long after we are told that we should be over a relationship or situation.

There are different kinds of trauma. Some are the types of trauma we are typically aware of —responses to natural disasters, war, abuse, genocide, and other atrocities. We associate those traumas with the development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which has helped to explain how victims survive in dire circumstances, including why the victims end up turning against themselves and becoming loyal to the abuser, as in the case of Stockholm Syndrome.

Understanding trauma begins when you remove judgment from the equation about the degree of atrocity that must exist in order to define trauma as trauma. There are other aspects of trauma, such as those that involve the body’s response to betrayal, childhood experiences, and interpersonal relationship trauma. A traumatic reaction is a completely subjective thing. There are more possible situations/origins of trauma than there are people.

Trauma lives inside the body as a physiological state. It will be easier to become aware of the manifestation of this state and to give it credibility if you realize that trauma can occur in the absence of abusers, victimizers, and overtly dire situations. You can have a traumatic reaction to anything or anyone that your body perceives as a threat, including a break in attachment with even the most well-meaning, non-intentionally insidious, but emotionally empty people.

Peter Levine has defined trauma as “Any experience which stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected from our bodies.” It is difficult to access coping mechanisms while in this overwhelmed state. This reaction can become more intense when the relational trauma occurs for long periods of time, with intermittent reinforcement, and when it is layered on top of relational trauma that occurred in childhood.

The stunned shock of anything that your body perceives as a threat, including a betrayal or a breakup, can live inside of us as a physiological state, even when we are not in present danger — when we are out of the breakup, moved out, and presumably moved on. Our bodies are engaged in a survival response even when out of the danger — which manifests itself as a freeze state that makes all the negative emotions you felt while in the relationship freeze within you as well.

What is this? Why does this happen?

The Freeze State.

It happens as a result of a completely natural human reaction to a potentially threatening situation. Peter Levine has explained how trauma develops in his book, “Waking the Tiger.” When faced with perceived danger or challenge, we become energetically aroused, mobilized, and poised to pounce, respond, and defend. This is the reason why weaklings are able to lift cars in order to rescue children. Our bodies were built to generate tremendous energy and appropriately constrict it so that it can be released. So we can fight or flee from threats for our very survival. When the energy is released, there is a tremendous sense of relief and somatic calm. There is no trauma. The situation makes sense to us because we witnessed our bodies working with us to resolve a threat.

So what happens to this tremendous, do-or-die energy isn’t released? When we feel we cannot fight or flee, as in the case of a trauma bond, there isn’t a discharge of this energy.

Instead, we hard stop freeze. Unlike other animals, our more highly evolved neocortex prevents an instinctual response of releasing this energy anyway, when the freeze state ends. Without the release, our body constricts this incredible bundle of energy and contains it in our nervous system. We are suspended in a highly mobilized emergency alert state, hypervigilant, and brimming with energy that our body now has to shift around, negotiate, and safety-valve slowly expel through adaptations that make us feel like we are experiencing an anxiety reaction. This too, is our body working for us, to prevent a nervous system meltdown.

This is trauma.

An example of this is when you brace yourself during the impact of a car accident and later find yourself completely motionless, your knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel, adrenaline coursing through you, heart rate is racing, breathing heavily, with almost no memory of the event.

Why won’t our “smarter” brain allow us to discharge this energy during the freeze state? Again, your body is trying its best to protect you. When that tremendous force of arousal energy is first triggered, it makes us feel up to the task, positive, and intensely alive. When the release is thwarted and is instead subsumed inwardly, we associate the energy with intensely negative emotions.

All those feelings and all the energy that you might have expelled during the relationship in a fight or flight response — all the anger, the shame, and the fear — now reside within you and may feel like are directed TOWARD you.

Our “smarter” brain attempts to protect us by negotiating these emotions within our circuitry because it believes that this work will protect us from experience sheer terror of the release. We fear releasing them because the energy itself is so strongly associated with danger, betrayal, and fear. You are now the home of negative energy that was never meant to be yours.

What does this have to do with your inability to let go of a toxic relationship?

Why does all of this slow you down when it comes to commonplace advice like “stop fixating, face the fear of moving on, and focus on yourself?”

Breaking trauma bonds.

The reason it feels like you can’t “break” a traumatic bond is because you are still suffering from your body’s adaptations to all of this chaotic, negative energy that is now stored inside. These very adaptations cause you to constantly review what happened, to fixate, to refrain from feeling fear and grief, and to obsess about the relationship.

• Anxiety.

The nervous system experiences trauma as a body feeling. In other words, your hyper-alert state lives on as symptoms that can be perceived as anxiety: increased heart rate, tension, agitation, flashbacks, shudders, muscle soreness, and racing thoughts.

All of this anxiety can feel unfair. We know it’s normal to feel grief over the loss of a relationship, but the hope is that we will feel some sense of relief once we get the courage to let go of someone we loved, but who we know is toxic, narcissistic, or emotionally unavailable. Hang on. Your body is communicating to you that internally, you still feel as if you are in danger. Because this anxiety state is so closely associated with the trauma bond, this may feel like a craving for your ex and the trauma bond, when it is in fact, a frantic message to stay away.

• Helplessness.

When exposed to personal trauma, the part of the brain that processes information, puts things into context, and communicates to you in narrative form shuts down. You are suspended in emergency activation mode, but without an ability to cope with the stress.

This is why no contact is so important. When exposed to anything that reminds you of your former partner, your nervous system triggers energy to communicate the presence of a threat but prevents you from consciously putting that threat into the context of what is occurring here and now. In this state, it can feel hard to learn new things or assimilate information.

This is why it can feel like such a gut punch to see your ex or hear about his or her life, even after time has passed and you are sure “you got this.” It can leave you feeling helpless and hopeless.

Trauma bonds don’t “heal with time” because trauma doesn’t have a sense of time. Don’t expect to never feel triggered. Feeling triggered does not mean that you are “back to square one” when it comes to processing the breakup. It means that you are experiencing traumatic anxiety, which once again makes you feel like you are frozen and immobilized. This can lead you to feel depressed even though the current stressor is no longer around. Don’t lose hope. Even the smallest bit of awareness of what is actually occurring will help you to unfreeze out of this state, and this will get more automatic and manageable the more you increase this awareness.

• Flashbacks.

Because you are not able to put your physiological distress into a time and place context, you are not able to consciously recognize that the traumatic event happened in the past. This causes confusion between past trauma and current stressors. Your body, behind the scenes, may be experiencing today’s stressful day as a flashback to the past, as if the trauma has returned.

Life goes on after a trauma bond. Other people and situations will stress you out and trigger anxious feelings that you will subconsciously associate with the trauma bond. This is why stressful days and subsequent disappointments make you feel like you are missing the trauma bond more intensely.

Trauma is like a trance. It makes you less aware of your current state, your bodily sensations, and your feelings. When you start to feel more safe, grounded, and present, you will slowly become more aware of when these flashbacks occur. You will feel less entranced and more able to untangle your prior distress from what is currently happening in your life.

• Trauma repetition review.

After an animal goes into fight, flight, or freeze and releases all the energy its nervous system conjured to get out of a dangerous situation, the animal goes into a review state. The point of this is to figure out what happened and to learn from the experience. Trauma bonded humans also go into this state, except the review occurs in a highly aroused and anxious state, because the energy from the experience has not been released.

This is why it is so difficult to stop fixating on what occurred, why you are experiencing obsessive thoughts, replaying old scripts, and why you feel abandoned and rejected long after a traumatic break has occurred. You are processing the trauma bond while you are still in a stressed and hyperaroused state.

This is why talking about trauma, rehashing the situation with your friends, and recycling anger doesn’t make you feel better and only further retraumatizes you. It may feel like you lost something important because you can’t let go of compulsively thinking about the trauma bond. This repetitive rehashing is healthy and normal, but only when conducted when you are out of an anxiety state and feeling grounded, safe, and present.

The antidote to compulsive rehashing is to remember that trauma lives inside the body, as a physiological state. Once activated, it shuts down your ability to process information. There’s nothing wrong with trying to figure out what happened, but know that doing so in this triggered state may make you feel like you need to return to the trauma bond.

• Hypervigilance.

Hypervigilance is the inevitable result of all of this hyperarousal. In trying to make sense of how you are feeling, your body actively searches for the source of the threat, even when one cannot be found. This drive can feel like a fixation to scan for the source, even though what you may just be reacting to is your own internal arousal. This gets repetitive and compulsive.

Your body remembers the trauma bond. It remembers how it felt and who was around. Even out of the relationship, a trauma bonded person may still feel threatened by either a memory of the past when dealing with a current stressor. Your brain scans for a source of the threat. Your brain lands on the emotionally charged memory and image of someone associated with the trauma bond. You may feel plagued by images of your ex-partner, but this is only because your body remembers this person as a source of threat, not because you need to run back to this person.

All of these symptoms occur because your nervous system is suspended in a hyper-aroused state, searching for new danger, and attempting to protect you. The key to releasing the trauma bond is to remind yourself, carefully, with compassion, and with consistency that you are no longer in danger and that you are now safe.

– This, first and foremost, has to be true. If you are still in any way involved in a trauma bond, then you are not safe. It may feel like you’ve hacked it and you are over it and you are ready for contact or another round, but your physiological systems will likely tell you otherwise.

– When you start to feel triggered, remind yourself of where you are in time and space. You may be experiencing a physiological memory of the past that makes you feel as if you are re-experiencing the trauma. Trauma robs you of your ability to stay in the present. It drops you in a trance and prevents you from recognizing what you are feeling — both emotionally and physiologically. There are many ways of grounding, including yoga, breath work, meditation, journaling, spending time in nature, among so many others. Once you get committed to healing, you will seek and find endless sources of information and relief in these. The key is to begin. Yoga will not release your trauma bond. Going for a hike will not make flashbacks and obsessive thoughts go away. These things may, however, bring you more awareness to your sensations and feelings, which will help you stay in the present when you feel yourself becoming taken over in a trauma bonded trance.

– Become emotionally available to yourself. The way to release a trauma bond is to very slowly and compassionately separate the amount of fear, that you may not even know you feel, about your negative emotions from the negative emotions themselves. These negative emotions are stored inside of you because your body internalized them, instead of using the energy of these emotions to flee or fight. They are not yours. These emotions are not your anger or your shame. You are safe now. You no longer need them. But you need a really safe base in yourself, your environment, and others in order to slowly release these. Be kind to yourself. It’s not easy to let go.

– A symptom of being trauma bonded is an intense desire to inform the person who hurt you about your healing. Don’t do that. It will only entrench you further. Your stored negative energy is not your own, but it’s not your ex’s either. It may feel like you have to “place” it somewhere, but this will not get rid of it, and you will only re-traumatize yourself. You can’t put it somewhere else. You can replace it with the knowledge this energy is no longer necessary to protect you, because you are safe now.

Trauma-bonded people are usually the foremost experts on their exes. In order to survive, they can discern mood changes from small facial movements, sideways grunts, or the way a person is standing. Start becoming this aware of yourself.

Start noticing what triggers you, when you are feeling hyper-vigilant, when you are reviewing or processing the relationship in a stressed out state. Start noticing when your flashbacks occur. You may find that they are actually occurring in response to current life stressors.

In becoming aware of this, you may find that there are other toxic people and situations in your current life that you can let go of in order to feel more safe. When other toxic bonds fall away, you may feel more ready to be yourself. When you feel more ready to be yourself, you may become even less ashamed and more emotionally aware. You can start to recognize which thoughts and emotions aren’t yours.

When you separate these, you will feel even more safe. Becoming more self-aware is work with a huge payoff, and you’re already so good doing it with everyone but yourself.

When you separate the past from the present, you will start to have more fun in the present. You will solve the present problems better. You will start to feel more like yourself again. You are safe now, and soon…

You will be free.

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How to Recognize and Break Traumatic Bonds

November 24, 2020

Leaving an abusive relationship usually isn’t as simple as walking out the door.

Along with concerns about finding a place to live, supporting yourself, or being prevented from seeing your children or loved ones, you might feel tied to your partner, unable to break away.

This emotional attachment, known as a trauma bond, develops out of a repeated cycle of abuse, devaluation, and positive reinforcement.

The trauma of abuse might create powerful feelings you struggle to make sense of, especially when abuse alternates with kindness and intimacy.

It’s only natural to develop a bond with someone who treats you with kindness. Many abusive relationships begin with a shower of affection and assurances of love.

When the abuse begins, it may take you by surprise. Afterward, your partner might apologize, swear to change, or insist “I was just upset.”

These attempts to manipulate often succeed, since you remember the early days of the relationship and believe they can be that person again.

Trauma bonding can also happen between:

a child and an abusive caregiver or other adult

a hostage and kidnapper

the leader and members of a cult

Signs of a traumatic bond

Trauma bonds can look a little different depending on the type of relationship, but they tend to have two main characteristics.

A cyclical nature

First, they depend on intermittent reinforcement. In other words, a cycle of abuse.

It’s generally easier to leave a situation that’s entirely bad, one where the abusive person never offers any kindness or concern for your well-being. If you don’t believe someone will ever change, you probably won’t stick around.

But in abusive relationships, your partner occasionally does treat you well. They might bring you gifts, call you their soul mate, take you out, or urge you to relax.

These gestures can be confusing and disarming, especially if thought of as signs of permanent change.

Eventually, love begins to overshadow the fear of further abuse. As you slowly regain a sense of trust, you might ignore or suppress memories of their past behavior until the cycle begins again.

A power imbalance

These bonds also rest on an underlying imbalance of power. In this dynamic, you might feel as if they control you to the point where you no longer know how to resist or break free.

Even if you manage to leave the relationship, you might have a hard time breaking that bond without professional help.

You might feel incomplete or lost without them and eventually return, simply because the abusive cycle is familiar and you don’t know how to live without it yet.

Other key signs

Here’s a look at some other characteristics of traumatic bonds:

You feel unhappy and may not even like your partner any longer, but you still feel unable to end things.

When you do try to leave, you feel physically and emotionally distressed.

When you say you want to leave, they promise to change but make no effort to actually do so.

You fixate on the “good” days, using them as proof that they truly care.

You make excuses and defend their behavior when others express concern.

You continue to trust them and hope to change them.

You protect them by keeping abusive behavior secret.

Trauma bonds can linger, even when the abuse happened long ago. You might struggle to stop thinking about someone who hurt you and feel the urge to reach out or try again.

Here’s a test that might help, though it’s not at all conclusive:

Ask yourself whether you’d encourage a loved one to leave a similar relationship. Answer honestly.

If you answer yes but still feel powerless to leave your relationship, that’s a good indicator of trauma bonding.

Why it happens

People who haven’t experienced abuse often struggle to understand why people remain in abusive relationships. They might believe you’re perfectly capable of leaving.

In reality, though, the trauma bond makes this extremely difficult.

People don’t choose abuse. They also can’t help the development of trauma bonds, which are driven by some pretty strong biological processes.

The freeze response

Perhaps you’re familiar with the fight-or-flight response, your body’s automatic response to any perceived threat. Maybe you’re even aware people respond to threats in four different ways: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

When you face abuse or fear the possibility of future abuse, your brain recognizes the impending distress and sends a warning to the rest of your body.

Adrenaline and cortisol (the stress hormones) flood in, jump-starting your survival instinct and triggering emotional and physical tension.

Here’s where the power imbalance comes into play: If you don’t feel as if you can safely escape or stand up to the person abusing you, freezing might seem like the best option, so you stay.

When thoughts of the abuse become too painful or difficult to bear, you choose to focus on the positive parts of your relationship and ignore or block the rest.

You might make excuses for them and justify their behavior to rationalize your need to stay.

Each repetition of the cycle can reinforce this sense of powerlessness, the seeming certainty that you’ll never be able to escape. You come to believe the false reality they’ve constructed to control you: You need them. They need you. You’re nothing without them. No one else cares.

These lies can chip larger and larger blocks from your identity and self-worth, tying you more tightly to the relationship.

Hormones play a part, too

Hormones can be powerful reinforcers. You only have to look at dopamine’s role in addiction to find support for this.

Dopamine has a similar function in trauma bonding. After an incident of abuse, the period of calm that often follows can ease your stress and fear.

Apologies, gifts, or physical affection offered by the abusive person serve as rewards that help reinforce the rush of relief and trigger the release of dopamine.

Since dopamine creates feelings of pleasure, it can strengthen your connection with the abuser. You want the dopamine boost, so you continue trying to make them happy to earn their affection.

Physical affection or intimacy also prompt the release of oxytocin, another feel-good hormone that can further strengthen bonds. Not only does oxytocin promote connection and positive feelings, it can also ease fear

Physical affection from an abusive partner, then, might dim distress and emotional pain, making it easier to focus on the positive treatment.

Breaking the bond

People who experienced abuse in childhood often feel drawn to similar relationships in adulthood, since the brain already recognizes the highs and lows of the cycle.

A history of trauma can make it even harder to break trauma bonds, but you can learn to stop this cycle. These tips can help.

Know what you’re dealing with

Recognizing the existence of the bond is an important first step. When it comes to abuse, of course, this is often easier said than done.

To find evidence for abuse and recognize signs of trauma bonding, here are some things to try:

Keep a journal

Writing down things that happened each day can help you begin to identify patterns and notice problems with behavior that may not have seemed abusive in the moment.

When abuse does happen, note what happened and whether your partner said anything afterward to excuse it.

Consider the relationship from another perspective

Pretend you’re reading about your relationship in a book. It’s often easier to examine negative events when you have some level of detachment.

Pay attention to the small details that make you uncomfortable or give you pause. Do they feel healthy to you?

Talk to loved ones

It’s not easy to open up about abuse. Maybe you got angry or brushed off friends and family when they expressed concern in the past.

Yet loved ones can offer essential perspective. Challenge yourself to listen and make a real effort to consider the accuracy of their observations.

Avoid self-blame

Believing you caused the abuse or brought it on yourself can make it harder to exercise your autonomy, effectively keeping you in the relationship.

Remind yourself that abuse is never your fault, no matter:

what you may or may not have done

how deeply you fear loneliness or a life without them

how many times you’ve already gone back

You do deserve better. Replacing self-criticism and blame with affirmations and positive self-talk can help this truth begin to take hold.

Cut off contact completely

Once you make the decision to leave, disrupt the cycle completely by stopping all communication.

If you co-parent, this might not be possible, but a therapist can help you establish a plan to maintain only necessary contact.

Create physical distance by finding a safe place to stay, such as with a relative or friend. Also consider changing your phone number and email address, if possible.

If you can’t do that, block them completely. They might get through with a new number, but ignore these messages and calls.

They might insist they’ll change, go to therapy, do anything, as long as you’ll just come back. These promises can seem pretty tempting.

Remind yourself, though, of just how many times they’ve already promised to change.

Get professional help

While you can take action to begin weakening the trauma bond on your own, these bonds tend to hold fast. You might not find it easy to break free without professional support, and that’s absolutely normal.

A therapist can teach you more about the patterns of abuse that drive trauma bonding, and this insight can often provide a lot of clarity.

In therapy, you can also:

explore factors fueling the bond

work on setting boundaries

learn skills for building healthy relationships

confront self-criticism and self-blame

develop a self-care plan

address mental health symptoms related to long-term trauma and abuse

It’s generally recommended to work with a trauma-informed therapist. Professionals who specialize in recognizing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), particularly complex PTSD and the aftereffects of abuse, can often have the biggest impact for people working to overcome this specific trauma.

Resources for extra support

If you need help recognizing abuse, leaving an abusive situation, or beginning the healing process after leaving an abusive partner, these resources can offer a starting place:

Love Is Respect offers resources specifically designed for people between 13 and 26 years old.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline offers free, confidential support 24/7 at 800-799-7233 or via chat. The organization also offers a guide for creating a safety plan.

The bottom line

Abuse is never your fault. Neither is the development of a trauma bond.

It may take some time to regain a sense of self-worth and feel as if you’ve finally broken free, but support from a trained professional can make all the difference.

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