Codependent Relationships: Know the Signs & Start Your Recovery
You may wonder whether or not you have a codependent relationship with your abuser or suffer from trauma bonding. It is important to understand what the symptoms are and how to effectively provide yourself with treatment in order to start the healing and recovery process.
Prolonged abuse is very corrosive to self-esteem and may result in chronic depression, physical illness due to unexpressed anger and resentment, hopelessness, and learned helplessness, so personalized therapy is necessary to help you recover.
What is codependency?
Codependency is an unhealthy pattern of behavior in an unbalanced relationship where one partner enables another to be irresponsible, immature, abusive, or to continue an addiction. The enabler has low self-esteem and relies excessively on his or her partner for his or her approval and sense of identity. Typically, the enabler grew up in a dysfunctional family, due to illness, addiction, neglect, or abuse.
Some of the symptoms of co-dependency include:
People pleasing and approval seeking
Lack of boundaries
Caretaking
Indecision and lack of trust in own judgment
Lack of self-esteem
Shame
Lack of self-awareness
A numbing of uncomfortable feelings
Difficulty in communicating thoughts, needs, or feelings
Need to control situations
Obsessing about other people
Fear of intimacy
Fear of being alone, rejected, or abandoned
What is trauma bonding?
Trauma bonding is a toxic connection that formed due to intense emotional experiences with another person. The victim often has codependency issues and is held hostage by her partner through emotional or physical abuse. These bonds are reinforced intermittently by sporadic love bombing and insincere promises that the abuser uses to manipulate and control their victim.
Some signs of trauma bonding include:
Inability to let go of the relationship, even though you know that it isn’t good for you.
Loyalty to a destructive partner, although you may not like or trust them.
You are addicted to them and set aside your own needs and desires for the relationship.
Your addiction to this person is not only psychological, but also physical.
Frequent arguments with this person about the same things although nothing changes.
You continue to believe false promises, even though they consistently break them.
Belief that you are trapped and feel that there is nothing that you can do about it.
You tolerate inexcusable behavior to maintain the relationship at any cost.
Thinking that you can’t live without them even though they mistreat you.
What you can do start the recovery process?
It is important not to blame or judge yourself for your partner’s toxic behaviors or for the fact that you tolerate them. Trauma bonding is not unusual in abusive relationships and may explain why you have stayed in this relationship when you are being abused.
The first step in making important changes to improve your life is recognition of the problem and its patterns.
A good therapist can help you identify unhealthy or destructive behaviors and how you can change them. Setting appropriate boundaries, boosting self-esteem, and being honest with yourself and others will help you to improve the dynamic of your relationships. Consider joining a support group in your area for codependency, trauma, abuse, or narcissist awareness. Read books on self-esteem, positive thinking, abuse, and co-dependency. If you have been traumatized, it may have developed into PTSD. The good news is that there are effective treatments that can provide relief and healing. Take care of yourself and build healthy relationships.
Recovery is possible. You deserve it no matter what your abuser tells you. It is up to you to take action.
For more information, insight, and actionable guidance on how to recover from a toxic, codependent relationship, Breaking Bonds: How To Divorce an Abuser & Heal provides you with the knowledge to leave your abuser safely and strategically. We are with you.
Rosemary Lombardy is a financial advisor with over 35 years of experience, and the founder of Breaking Bonds, a comprehensive resource platform for abused women. Although her professional expertise is in financial matters, her perspective on marital abuse, divorce, and recovery is deeply heartfelt and holistic. She draws on decades of personal experience, as well as the experiences of others, to help inform abused spouses so that they will become empowered to leave their abusers and begin to heal.
Rosemary Lombardy's award-winning new book, Breaking Bonds: How to Divorce an Abuser and Heal - A Survival Guide is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anywhere that sells books.
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