CCChat-Magazine_Issue-26-Trauma-Bonding

Dr Karen Williams
On Trauma Bonding
Dr. Karen Williams
is a Consultant
Psychiatrist, based
in Australia, who
has completed her
specialty training
in General Adult
Psychiatry, and
obtained a
Fellowship in Post-
Traumatic Stress
Disorder.
She treats both
complex Post-
Traumatic Stress
Disorder and Post-
Traumatic Stress
Disorder and is a
member of the
Professional
Advisory Group for
The Trauma
Recovery Centre
Dr. Williams is the.
founder of Doctors
Against Violence
Towards Women,
an advocacy group
aimed at
promoting the
mental and
physical safety of
women who are
survivors of Family
Violence and
sexual assault.
I
interviewed
Dr Williams for the
November 2020 issue of CCChat. It was
a fascinating conversation on
borderline personalities disorders and
coercive control. This conversation on
trauma bonding is equally revelatory.
M: What is trauma bonding? There is a lot of confusion
around what it is and how it occurs.
K: It’s probably really important to understand that it
is people’s ideas, first and foremost. Don’t think of it as
a science because what you’ll read is people’s
interpretation of human behaviour and everyone is
going to do that differently, it’s not like a scientific
concept that’s proven 100%. Everyone is sprouting
their own hypothesis about why it happens and I just
think it’s important to know that because that’s why
you’ll find this contradictory information out there,
because it isn’t a science, it’s an effect, it’s not like you
can do a blood test and go ‘yep, you’ve got that
symptom.’
M: That makes sense. How would you say it occurs?
K: What I’m seeing in clinical practice is that it
happens in people who are already vulnerable to it and
it is a consequence of coercive control. You usually
find, particularly in adults, that they will have a history
of childhood abuse or childhood trauma already. What
usually happens is that you’ve got an already
vulnerable individual and they are vulnerable because
of their childhood – they have already experienced a
childhood where they have not been given a great deal
of love or been given inconsistent love or violence. So,
you think about how a child has to survive, to me it’s a
survival mechanism and when a little kid is exposed to
a parent that is unsafe, what they try to do and what we
all do as animals, is to try and understand that person,
or that abuser and if you understand them, then you
can control it a little better.
Making The Invisible Visible