Though I’m not usually one who ever tries to speak on behalf of anyone, I think that we can agree that most, if not all of us, have this desire to be seen, heard, or understood. This is something that I have been reflecting on a lot lately as I’ve examined the way that I’ve built friendships over the past decade and a half of my adulthood.
Things are so weird right now…
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment in time when things changed, but there has been a noticeable shift in most of my relationships. I no longer talk to people that I once considered to be close friends, and if I’m honest I don’t have much of a desire to attempt small talk to force a connection.
It’s weird because I’ve always been the type of person who welcomes everyone back into my life at any moment regardless of how much time has passed since the last time that we talked. If you were important to me then, you are important to me now. But I think I’m starting to understand that the way these bonds were formed, is probably the reason that the relationships are no longer appealing.
Most of these friendships have been trauma bonds, but let me define a couple of things before we get too far into this post…
Trauma is defined as: an experience that produces psychological injury or pain. This can play out so many ways in someone’s life, so I will allow you to fill in the blank with your own examples. And you may or may not be aware that the clinical definition of the phrase “trauma bond” focuses on abusive, narcissistic relationships, but this is not what I am talking about.
Trauma bonds, in my life, is defined as bonds that were formed one of two ways: 1) we met while I was going through an extremely stressful or traumatic situation or period of time and a bond was formed; or 2) though we may not have met during said stressful time, we acknowledged that we experienced similar pain or trauma, and most of our interactions and/ or conversations were centered around this shared pain.
So just to make sure we’re on the same page, the trauma ultimately was the foundation that the relationship was built on and/ or served as the driving force that sustained the bonds.
Initially this was not problematic…
Feeling seen, heard, or understood was extremely helpful while trying to make sense of whatever foolishness I was being forced to endure; especially while trying to process grief. I can recall countless hours some people spent listening to me talk in circles as I discussed my pain, frustration, and fears. The more painful things that I couldn’t quite articulate didn’t have to be thoroughly explained, because in some ways they already understood where I was coming from.
But our bonds were unable to escape the boundaries that the trauma built for us…
I noticed that, no matter what else we tried to talk about, our conversations always ended up trauma focused. It’s like we had been programmed to only have a certain type of interaction, and when I began to experience more healing and freedom, it seemed counterproductive to have trauma focused conversations. Furthermore, we truly had nothing else to talk about, because life had caused us to drift apart.
As I said earlier, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment in time when things changed, and I would never go as far as to say the bonds themselves are where the tragedy lies. As I’ve been mourning the place these bonds once held in my heart, and trying to categorize some newer bonds that have bubbled to the surface; I realize that the tragedy lies in the fact that I truly had lifetime expectations for seasonal people…
Thank you for writing this…I learned what trauma bonds mean and how some people can be impacted and how to identify what a bond would look like.
Thank you so much for reading!