The Truth About Trauma Bonding and Narcissists

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Living with a partner who qualifies for a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is never easy and pleasant. The reasons why this is so have been covered extensively elsewhere, so I will just mention a few. People with untreated NPD:

1. Lack the ability to care deeply about anyone other than themself.
2. Lack emotional empathy, which leads to them feeling indifferent to their partner’s emotional and physical pain.
3. Lack whole object relations—the ability to form a realistic, stable, and integrated view of themselves and other people. Instead, they split and can only see people in unrealistic and extreme ways as either all-good (special and perfect) or all-bad (defective, worthless garbage).
4. See their partner as an enemy who must be subjugated during arguments instead of working on solving the issues.
5. Do not know how to have an equal, emotionally intimate, and fair relationship with a partner.
6. Are hypersensitive to slights and are easily triggered.
7. Want everything in the relationship to center around their needs and preferences.

Note: In this post, I am using the terms narcissist, narcissistic, and NPD as shorthand for someone who qualifies for a full diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder

Trauma Bonding

A lot of myths have grown up around NPD and trauma bonding. If you are not familiar with what trauma bonding means, you are not alone. The term itself was only coined in 1997 by Patrick C. Carnes, a psychologist who is an addiction and recovery specialist.

Of course, psychotherapists know about very abusive relationships and domestic violence. We are required to take continuing education on the topic of various forms of relationship abuse—child abuse, domestic violence, elder abuse—to maintain our license to practice. We are mandated reporters.

And we also know that in many of these cases people who try to help the abuse victim leave their abuser are met with excuses and resistance. It is only the term trauma bonding that is new and its association with narcissistic relationships.

Trauma bonding can be defined as a counterintuitive response to intermittent abuse in which, instead of leaving their abuser, the victim of the abuse becomes more emotionally attached to their abuser.

I often say that people give people with NPD too much credit. They tend to assume that every narcissist intentionally creates all the situations that cause their mate pain. Trauma bonding is one of those situations.

Some Facts About Trauma Bonding

Here are some facts about NPD and trauma bonding based on my experience.

Fact 1: Some people who are in an abusive relationship feel so attached to their abuser that they will stay in the abusive relationship even when they have the ability to leave it. This is the phenomenon that we are calling trauma bonding.

Fact 2: Not everyone who decides to stay in an emotionally abusive relationship with a narcissist does so because they are trauma-bonded. My clients who made the choice to stay said they did so for one or more of the following reasons:

1. They liked their lifestyle.
2. They did not have the money to leave and start over.
3. They were too afraid of their partner's reaction to leave.
4. They were married to the narcissist and did not want to subject their children to an ugly divorce.
5. They had the opposite of trauma bonding. Their distrust of their narcissistic partner led them to totally withdraw their emotional investment in their partner. They treated their partner like a hard-to-please and annoying roommate and they found other ways to fulfill their emotional needs.
6. They were over 60 and did not want to start over again at this stage of life.
7. As narcissists go, their partner was fairly stable and did not get triggered and become abusive as often as most people with NPD do. They were fond of their partner and decided that the situation was tolerable.
8. They felt too emotionally exhausted from the relationship to tackle the job of figuring out how to leave and start a new life.
9. Whenever they mentioned leaving, their partner begged them to stay and promised to change.
10. They split too. When things get really bad, they start making plans to leave. But then their partner acts nice again and they no longer felt like leaving. This group may never leave or take a very long time to leave because they keep changing their mind.

Fact 3: Most people who are in a relationship with a person with NPD are able to leave their abusive partner and do not experience trauma bonding. Some leave after a few dates as soon as they see a red flag, while others break off the relationship soon after the abuse starts.

Fact 4: Trauma bonding can occur in abusive relationships with abusers who are not narcissists.

Fact 5: Most victims of narcissistic abuse who do leave report that they felt sad, anxious, disappointed, depressed, and angry at their abuser. However, they were not trauma-bonded and were able to move on with their life.

What Do Narcissists Think About Trauma Bonding?

1. None of the people with NPD that I have worked with over the years brought up trauma bonding or seemed to know the concept existed.
2. None of these people with NPD had ever heard of intermittent reinforcement unless they had studied experimental psychology in college.
3. Most of these narcissists were not great planners and were quite impulsive. If someone got trauma bonded to them, it was not because they consciously planned for that to occur.

Summary

Some people do experience a trauma bond to their narcissistic abuser that makes it extremely difficult for them to leave and save themselves without a great deal of help and emotional support from other people.

However, most people do not get trauma bonded to their abuser and are able to leave whenever they decide enough is enough. There are reasons why some people are more susceptible to becoming trauma-bonded than others, but the reasons are too complex to address here at this time.

Trauma Essential Reads

Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Can Playing Tetris Make Trauma Easier to Manage?

Regarding the narcissist’s point of view on trauma bonding, most people with NPD are not even aware of the concept of trauma bonding and that it may be playing a role in their relationship. Narcissists mainly only notice whether they are getting what they want from their partner.