Welcome to the Unfuck Your Relationships podcast, the show
where we are no longer just unfucking your love life, we are
unfucking your entire life. Because around here, we raise
standards, we break patterns, we do the shadow work, we upgrade
yourself concept, your boundaries, your confidence,
your relationships, your health, your money, all of it.
There is no fluff here. There's no pretending, there's
no performing. Just radical, sometimes brutal
honesty, truth telling, and the kind of big sister best friend
energy that calls you the fuck forward.
So if you are ready to stop settling for the bare minimum
and you are finally ready to become the woman that you are so
proud to wake up as in the morning, you are in the right
place. So let's unfuck your life one
episode at a time. All right, now let's get into
today's episode. Hello, my love, welcome back to
the Unfuck Your Relationships podcast.
I'm your host, Michelle Panning and this is episode 241.
And today we are going to talk about trauma bonds, why smart,
self aware women stay in relationships that are hurting
them and how you actually start detaching from them without
shaming yourself, without bypassing and without pretending
it's just a nervous system thing or it's just an attachment style
thing, right? This episode is a especially for
the woman who knows she's capable, she's emotionally
intelligent, you've probably been doing the work, and yet in
love you feel confused, hooked, dysregulated, and constantly
questioning yourself. So if that's you, you are
exactly where you need to be. So why don't people leave toxic
relationships? Well the reason that people
don't leave toxic relationships is because they're not toxic all
the time and I really want you to let that land right.
If someone was awful 100% of the time, leaving would be fucking
obvious. That's not how trauma bonds
work. Trauma bonds are built through
intermittent reinforcement, which means you experience
emotional lows like withdrawal, criticism, silence, dismissal,
outright disrespect, followed by emotional highs like affection,
apologies, love bombing, sex promises, moments where they
feel like the person that you fell in love with and your brain
starts enduring the bad because it remembers the good.
And those highs don't feel nice, they feel like relief, right?
Relief after pain is incredibly addictive to the nervous system
because it spikes dopamine and oxytocin at the same time.
So one day you're being yelled at or you being shut out, and
then the next day they're telling you how special you are
and how they can't imagine life without you.
And your body is like, see, it's OK, we're safe again.
And that cycle is actually what's what keeps you stuck.
So what is actually a trauma bond like?
Let's talk about what a trauma bond actually is.
A trauma bond is an intense emotional and psychological
attachment formed through repeated cycles of mistreatment
followed by intermittent care or affection.
Right. It's not just about love, it's
about survival wiring. So someone can demean you,
belittle you, withdraw from you, make you feel small, make you
feel fucking crazy, and then days later act like nothing
happened and then flood you with attention.
Pray, gifts, intimacy, yada yada, right?
And your nervous system starts associating the relief of good
moments with connection, intimacy, and love, even though
nothing was actually repaired, right?
No accountability was taken, no safety was restored.
It was all just swept under the rug and replaced with intensity.
And intensity feels powerful, but it is not intimacy.
So the addiction piece no one wants to talk about, right?
I hate to use the word addicted because it sounds dramatic, but
if you've been a trauma bond in a trauma bond, you know exactly
what I'm talking about. You can know intellectually that
the relationship is hurting you and still feel panicked at the
thought of leaving, right? The idea of leaving feels scary,
but the idea of them leaving you feels unbearable.
So you start doing whatever you can to avoid that outcome.
You abandoned yourself so you don't get abandoned.
You stay quiet, you explain yourself better, you soften your
needs, you make excuses. And underneath all of that is
this terrifying belief. If I give everything and it's
still not enough, then I must not be enough.
That belief is the hook. That belief is what keeps you
trying. Intensity is not intimacy,
right? One of the biggest lies that
trauma bonds sell is that the highs and lows equal depth.
It feels like you've been through so much together.
It feels like no one else could understand your bond.
It feels like we've survived so much.
It's US against the world. But here's the truth that you
probably don't want to hear. You guys have built the chaos.
You built the roller coaster. This isn't something you're
going through together. It's something you're enduring.
Treating you well after mistreating you is not repair.
It's not reconciliation. If they never take
accountability, if they never ask how their actions impacted
you, if they never change their behavior, then nothing has been
healed. You're just being reset for the
next cycle. So healing doesn't start when
you ask. Do I feel bonded to this person?
Because of course you do. Of course you do.
Trauma bonds create intense attachment.
But healing starts when you ask a different question.
Is this person actually safe for me?
Right. It's not even about like, well,
yes, obviously physical safety, but like emotionally safety.
So is this person actually safe for me?
Not perfect, not calm all the time, but safe.
Can you bring up something that hurt you and be met with empathy
and curiosity? Or does it turn into
defensiveness or blame or escalation or your valid needs
or valid hurt being dismissed? Can you be vulnerable without it
being used against you later? Because if the answer is no,
then the bond you feel is not evidence of love.
It's evidence of conditioning. Because what Love Actually is,
is Real love is kind. Real love is respectful.
Real love doesn't fucking call you names or scream at you or
belittle you or dismiss you or make you feel afraid to speak.
Yeah, we all fuck up, right? I've fucked up a million times,
as we know. I've been very vocal about this
on the podcast. We all say things we regret
sometimes. But real love takes
accountability. Love repairs.
Love cares about impact. Love is willing to put ego aside
for the sake of connection. If someone repeatedly hurts you
and refuses to change, that is not love.
If you're listening to this thinking, why does it sound like
she's literally in my head, then it is time that you joined the
connected woman. This is the work that completely
rewires how you show up in your love life.
If you're in a relationship, this is how you stop repeating
the same patterns over and over again.
You stop lashing out, you stop shutting down, and you turn
things around to the point where your partner actually falls in
love with you all over again. And if you're single, this is
how you stop choosing the same person in a different body and
actually attract someone who is emotionally available, ready, is
obsessed with you, and can meet you from the very beginning.
This is the end of I know better, but I don't do better.
This is the point where these patterns are stopped for good.
If you know you're ready for this work, you know what to do.
The link will be in the description.
Join the connected woman today. Let's get back to the episode.
So let's get into the shadow work piece.
Why this feels familiar. Here's the part we have to talk
about with compassion, not blame.
Trauma bonds don't come out of nowhere.
If healthy, safe love was not modeled for you growing up,
chaos feels totally normal. If you learned early on that you
had to earn love or manage other people's emotions or stay quiet
to stay safe, or abandoned your needs to stay connected, Your
nervous system may interpret unpredictability as intimacy.
And so over functioning often starts in childhood, right?
People pleasing starts as protection.
Hyper vigilance starts as survival.
So this is how your body just adapted and trauma bonded
relationships rely on certain traits in the partner.
They need someone empathetic, forgiving, loyal, self
reflective, willing to take accountability, and willing to
question themselves. Right.
They need someone who is scared of conflict.
They need someone who's scared of disconnection.
They need someone who believes that love means trying harder.
That's not a flaw. All of these things, you're
like, oh shit, should I not be that?
No, that's not a flaw. That's your heart.
That's your beautiful heart. But when it's paired with
someone who avoids accountability, lacks empathy,
or feels entitled to your labor, it becomes a trap.
So you can know all of this and still stay.
I'm sure a lot of you are listening to this and being
like, yeah, I know this and I've still stayed.
Because the problem isn't awareness, it's attachment.
Your nervous system associates the person with safety, even if
they're unsafe, because attachment wounds feel like life
or death in the body. So as a child, losing attachment
meant danger. And that wiring doesn't just
disappear because you're an adult.
That's why leaving can feel unbearable.
And that's why the pain of staying eventually has to
outweigh the fear of leaving. So detachment begins when you
stop focusing on who they could be and start looking at who they
consistently are, right? Not on their good days, not when
they're apologetic, but over time.
Are they a source of peace or chaos?
Safety or fear? Confusion or clarity.
And no, it doesn't matter if they're narcissistic or avoidant
or traumatized or just bad at communications.
I don't. Quite frankly, I don't fucking
care if the behavior continues after you have repeatedly asked
for change. That's your fucking answer.
Stop doing emotional labor trying to diagnose someone who
has no interest in changing. And this is the thing, right?
Because you being so focused on him and what he's doing and if
he's a narcissist or he's avoiding or his attachment cell
is actually you distracting yourself from having to look at
yourself right now. Shame is what keeps you stuck.
This is why we don't want to look at our stuff.
Because self blame feels powerful.
Because if it's your fault, you can fix it.
But that belief keeps you trapped.
No amount of self reflection will fix someone else's
unwillingness to take accountability right.
You are worthy of safety, of consistency, of care, and I know
part of you struggles to believe that, but let me be a competing
voice with that part of you until you can hold it yourself.
So then we talk about boundaries and the truth about them.
Healthy boundaries do not destroy healthy relationships.
The people who punish you for boundaries are the same people
who benefited from you not having any.
And if you are in an abusive situation, the boundary is not
explaining yourself better. The boundary is always removing
yourself. Your safety comes first,
Physical, emotional, sexual, all of it.
Right now, this is the part what happens after you leave, right?
There's grief. Because even when you leave,
even when you know it was unhealthy, you will grieve.
You will miss them. You will remember the good
moments. You will doubt yourself.
That does not mean you're you made the wrong choice.
It means that your nervous system is detoxing from a bond
that once felt like survival. It's like if a, you know, if
someone was detoxing from and they're an alcoholic and they're
detoxing from alcohol or or drugs or whatever, of course
everything in your system is going to be like, Oh my God,
pick up the whiskey or pick up the heroin or whatever it is,
right? Does that mean you made the
wrong choice in quitting? No, right?
It's literally detoxing. Missing them does not mean go
back. It means feel the grief and keep
moving forward. Now this is exactly why the
connected woman exists, because trauma bonds are not broken by
logic alone, they're broken by rebuilding self trust, self
worth, and nervous system safety.
The connected woman is where we dismantle these beliefs that
love has to hurt, you have to earn connection, that your needs
are too much right. It's where you learn how to stop
over functioning, stop abandoning yourself, and start
choosing relationships that feel calm and grounded and secure.
This is not about blaming yourself, it's about reclaiming
yourself. So if you saw yourself in this
episode 1, I love you, right? I love you so much and I'm
sending you so much love. But if you saw yourself in this
and you're done repeating the same cycles and you're ready to
actually change how you show up in love from the inside out, the
connected woman is your next step.
So you'll find all the details in the show notes or you can
come DM me on Instagram TCW and I can help you out.
All right, guys, thanks for hanging out with me today.
I love you and I'll see you next week.
All right, my love, let what landed today actually land.
Because this podcast is not just here to inspire you.
It is here to change you, your standards, your patterns, your
life. And if you are done living on
autopilot, you're done shrinking.
You're done repeating the same fucking shit over and over.
Let this be your reminder. You are built for more.
Unfucking your life is a choice you make every single day.
And if you want to go deeper, come hang out with me on
Instagram at Michelle Panning because that is where I share
all of the raw stuff, the real time shifts that I'm having in
my life and everything that I am doing to raise my own standards
to in life and in love. I love you.
I believe in your next level. Go and fuck your life, babe.