CCChat-Magazine_Issue-26-Trauma-Bonding

Culturally, everyone around us seems
to be very blind to the reality of how
perpetrators' behaviours are the
problem and NOT the response of
victims and survivors to the abuse
forced on them. Also some deem a
person trauma bonded when they have
been living in a situation even
professionals, marriage and family
counselors, pastors, family and friends
failed to name as abuse. We are told to
work on our ‘high conflict’
relationships in one context, even
forced to by family court, then harmed
by other entities such as child
protection for having contact.
Though professionals have used this
push and pull of trauma bonding as a
deficit within survivors, I feel that they
are doing grave violence to survivors
by not placing the responsibility on the
perpetrator themselves. Professionals
should be saying to survivors: " You
were living in an impossible situation
where your life, your children’s lives,
your wellbeing, your mental stability
was being threatened every day and
nobody was helping you because they
didn’t see it, because they didn’t
recognize it, because they supported it,
because of their deeply held beliefs, or
their biases or their prejudices. You are
a brave and amazing and resilient
human and you are capable of keeping
" Everyone around us seems to be very blind to the reality of how
perpetrators' behaviours are the problem and NOT the response of
victims and survivors to the abuse forced on them."
Being connected to your perpetrator,
who holds all financial power and
control, who can harm you and your
children, in the absence of meaningful
support to end that perpetration, is not
a trauma bond. It is a reasonable self
protective strategy. Staying in the good
graces of your perpetrator is a
fundamentally self-preserving action.
You cannot be safely defiant in the face
of a perpetrator if nobody is willing to
see, understand and intervene in these
situations to partner with survivors –
counsellors, pastors, friends and
family, even social workers and child
protection services are missing that
perpetration. What choice do we have,
as victims and survivors, but to try and
navigate around our perpetrator in
ways we deem will de-escalate the
situation when no one else is willing to
hold them accountable?
yourself and your children safe under
those conditions, when nobody was
helping you, and you were incredibly
scared and alone. "
I don’t want us to talk about trauma
bonding in response to perpetration, I
want to talk about the resiliency of
victims and survivors who are
navigating violent situations, which
professionals and systems are failing
to respond to appropriately, safely. If
you go even further into cultural issues
intersections and intersectionalities
and look at women who are black,
immigrants, indigenous women, they
are accused of trauma bonding often as
a means to take their children. This is
because of their unique vulnerabilities
within our systems which historically
have been harmful and adversarial to
them.
Making The Invisible Visible