Why Do I Attract Abusive Relationships?
This is one of the most common and painful questions people carry into therapy. It is important to say this clearly: attracting abusive or emotionally unhealthy relationships is not a sign of weakness, poor judgment, or low intelligence.
Most often, it is the result of unresolved emotional conditioning stored in the subconscious and nervous system. When early relationships taught us that love involves fear, unpredictability, emotional withdrawal, or criticism, the system adapts. As adults, the subconscious is drawn toward what feels familiar—even when it is harmful.
This familiarity can be misinterpreted as chemistry, intensity, or deep connection.
What is Trauma Bonding?
Trauma bonding is a deep emotional attachment that forms through repeated cycles of emotional pain followed by moments of relief, care, or affection. Over time, the mind and nervous system start to link emotional intensity with connection, so instability can begin to feel like love.
People caught in trauma bonds are often very aware that the relationship feels unhealthy, draining, or confusing—yet leaving can feel almost impossible. This isn’t about a lack of willpower or insight. Trauma bonding is a subconscious survival strategy, usually rooted in early attachment experiences.
Essentially, trauma bonding emerges when love, safety, and emotional connection are offered inconsistently. When closeness is repeatedly paired with fear, neglect, criticism, or withdrawal, the subconscious learns to stay attached in order to maintain any sense of connection, even when it’s painful.
The nervous system begins to equate:
- Emotional highs and lows with intimacy
- Relief after pain with love
- Attachment with endurance rather than safety
This pattern often operates silently, shaping relationship choices without conscious awareness.
Causes of Trauma Bonding
Trauma bonding usually begins in childhood, long before we can understand or verbalise what is happening. When a child grows up with caregivers who are emotionally inconsistent—loving at times and distant, critical, unpredictable, or unavailable at others—the child adapts in order to maintain connection.
Common childhood roots include:
- Love that feels conditional or performance-based
- Emotional neglect mixed with occasional affection
- Fear of abandonment or rejection
- Being required to emotionally manage or please caregivers
The subconscious learns that staying connected is safer than expressing needs or setting boundaries. This attachment blueprint is then carried into adult life.
Abuse and Karma Connection
Beyond the subconscious attraction mentioned above, there is also a clear karmic dimension to becoming trapped in abusive dynamics. Some souls choose these experiences to learn the difficult but powerful lesson of self-empowerment. Therefore, to reduce overall suffering, it is important to address karmic baggage through Karmic Healing or Astro-Akashic Healing!
Common Trauma Bonding Patterns That Lead to Abusive Relationships
Trauma bonding often operates quietly in the background, shaping attraction and relationship choices without conscious awareness. Below are some common patterns through which trauma bonding can lead a person to repeatedly attract abusive or emotionally unhealthy relationships.
Abuse feels like Love, like Home: If your early caregivers or parents were abusive or neglectful, there’s a good chance you may feel more comfortable in similarly abusive or neglectful relationships. Because you already have a mental template for this kind of dynamic, you’re more likely to accept it. By contrast, healthier or more balanced relationships can feel strange or awkward, and you may experience less chemistry simply because you have no internal reference for what they’re supposed to feel like. Does abuse feel like home, exciting, and normal, boring?
Love Must Be Earned: If love in childhood was condition—based on obedience, achievement, or pleasing others, the adult self may tolerate neglect or mistreatment, believing love requires effort, sacrifice, or endurance. Do I feel worthy of love as I am, or do I believe I must prove my value to be chosen?
Chasing Emotional Availability: Inconsistent affection early in life can create a strong pull toward emotionally distant or unavailable partners. Rare moments of attention feel deeply rewarding, reinforcing attachment despite emotional pain. Am I drawn to someone’s potential rather than how they consistently treat me?
Becoming the Emotional Caretaker: Children who learned to manage a caregiver’s emotions often grow into adults who feel responsible for fixing, soothing, or saving their partners—even at the cost of their own well-being. Do I feel responsible for my partner’s emotions while ignoring my own needs?
Mistaking Chaos for Passion: When emotional unpredictability was normalised early on, calm and stability can feel unfamiliar. Volatile or controlling relationships may feel intense and exciting, while healthy connections feel emotionally flat. Does emotional calm feel uncomfortable or boring to me compared to intensity and drama?
Self-Blame Instead of Self-Protection: If expressing hurt or needs led to criticism or dismissal in childhood, adults may minimise abuse, question their own perceptions, or justify harmful behaviour rather than setting boundaries. When something hurts me, do I question myself before questioning the behaviour?
Bonding Through Conflict and Reconciliation: When closeness followed conflict or emotional withdrawal in early relationships, repeated breakups and reunions may later be mistaken for deep love instead of recognised as warning signs. Do I feel closer to someone only after emotional pain, conflict, or fear of loss?
Fear of Being Alone: Early emotional abandonment can make solitude feel unsafe. As a result, staying in an abusive relationship may feel less frightening than the possibility of being alone. Does the idea of being alone feel more frightening than being emotionally mistreated?
These reflections are not meant to judge or diagnose. They are invitations to notice patterns that were once protective but may no longer serve you. With the right support, trauma bonding can be healed—allowing attraction to shift from intensity and instability toward safety, respect, and emotional nourishment.
The Nervous System and Familiarity: A Brief Neuroscience Perspective
From a neuroscience standpoint, the nervous system is designed to prioritise predictability over pleasure.
If the nervous system learned early in life that emotional instability was normal, it will unconsciously seek similar emotional states in adulthood. Calm, steady, respectful relationships may initially feel unfamiliar or even unsafe, while emotionally volatile relationships feel strangely recognisable.
This is because:
- The brain associates familiarity with safety
- Emotional intensity activates survival-based attachment responses
- Relief after distress creates strong bonding through dopamine and oxytocin release
Trauma bonding is therefore not psychological weakness—it is a nervous system pattern that can be gently retrained.
You May Be Attracting Trauma-Bonded Relationships If…
This self-reflection checklist is not meant for self-criticism, but for awareness.
You may notice trauma-bonded patterns if you:
- Feel strong attraction very quickly, even before emotional safety is established
- Feel anxious, unsettled, or insecure when a partner pulls away or becomes distant
- Stay in relationships despite repeated emotional pain or broken boundaries
- Feel responsible for fixing, healing, or emotionally managing your partner
- Experience emotional highs after conflict, followed by fear of loss
- Find calm, stable relationships unexciting or emotionally flat
- Fear being alone more than being mistreated
If several of these resonate, it suggests an attachment pattern rooted in survival rather than choice.
Why Trauma-Bonded Patterns Repeat
Trauma bonding does not repeat because someone seeks pain. It repeats because the subconscious seeks what is familiar. Unresolved attachment wounds continue to drive attraction, choices, and emotional responses. Without healing at the subconscious and nervous system level, the same relationship dynamics tend to reappear—often with different partners but similar emotional experiences.
Lasting change requires working with the root of the pattern, not just the surface behaviour.
Are You in a Trauma-Bonded Relationship?
Trauma-bonded relationships are rarely entered consciously. More often, they are shaped by early emotional experiences, attachment wounds, and subconscious survival patterns. This brief self-reflection is not meant to label or diagnose—but to invite awareness.
Take a moment to sit with the questions below and notice what arises within you.
• Do you feel deeply attached to someone who repeatedly hurts, neglects, or emotionally withdraws?
• Do moments of affection, apology, or closeness quickly erase the memory of past pain?
• Do you feel anxious, unsettled, or emotionally dysregulated during periods of distance or silence?
• Do you stay in the relationship hoping the other person will change, heal, or finally choose you?
• Do you find yourself justifying disrespect, emotional unavailability, or controlling behaviour?
• Do you feel responsible for managing the other person’s emotions, moods, or reactions?
• Does the idea of leaving feel more frightening than staying, even when the relationship feels unsafe?
• Do you feel emotionally exhausted yet unable to detach or move on?
• Do similar relationship patterns repeat despite your conscious efforts to choose differently?
• Do you associate love with intensity, longing, emotional pain, or instability?
• Do you feel you must earn love through sacrifice, patience, or self-abandonment?
• When you imagine a calm, secure relationship, does it feel unfamiliar, boring, or unsafe?
If several of these questions resonate, it may indicate a trauma bond rather than a healthy emotional attachment.
Trauma bonds are not a sign of weakness or poor choices. They are subconscious adaptations formed to preserve connection, safety, or love—often early in life. These patterns live in the nervous system and emotional memory, not in logic alone.
Through hypnotherapy, Inner Child Healing, and Shadow Work, the subconscious roots of trauma bonding can be gently accessed and released. This allows you to stop recreating painful dynamics and begin forming relationships grounded in emotional safety, self-worth, and conscious choice.
Awareness is the first step. Healing is the journey that follows.
Healing Trauma Bonding with Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is one of the most effective approaches for healing trauma bonding because it works directly with the subconscious mind, where these patterns are formed and stored.
Through a deeply relaxed and safe state, hypnotherapy helps:
- Access early emotional imprints without re-traumatisation
- Release subconscious associations between love and pain
- Calm the nervous system and reduce emotional reactivity
- Rebuild internal safety and emotional stability
As the subconscious learns that connection can be safe and steady, the emotional pull toward trauma-bonded relationships naturally weakens.
Inner Child Healing: Rebuilding Emotional Safety
Trauma bonding is often rooted in an inner child that learned to adapt, suppress needs, or endure emotional discomfort in order to receive love.
Inner Child Healing gently focuses on:
- Identifying unmet emotional needs from childhood
- Healing feelings of abandonment, rejection, or unworthiness
- Reparenting wounded parts with consistency, compassion, and safety
As the inner child begins to feel supported from within, the need to seek validation or emotional security from unstable relationships reduces significantly.
Learn more about this approach here: Inner Child Healing
Shadow Work: Healing Unconscious Attraction Patterns
Shadow Work addresses the unconscious aspects of the psyche that influence attraction, behaviour, and relationship choices.
In trauma bonding, shadow elements may include:
- Fear of abandonment
- Suppressed anger or unmet emotional needs
- Deep-seated beliefs around worthiness and love
- Familiarity with emotional chaos or intensity
By bringing these hidden patterns into awareness and integration, Shadow Work allows conscious choice to replace unconscious repetition.
Explore Shadow Work here: Shadow Work
Long-Term Healing: Attracting Healthy Relationships
Healing trauma bonding is not about avoiding relationships or becoming emotionally detached. It is about developing inner stability, emotional safety, and self-trust.
With consistent inner work, many clients experience:
- Attraction to emotionally available partners
- Clearer boundaries and stronger self-worth
- Reduced attachment anxiety
- Relationships based on respect, safety, and mutual growth
The shift happens gradually, from the inside out.
Book Your Session Today
Take the first step toward reconnecting with your true self. Let us guide you on this journey of self-discovery and healing.
Session Location
Online over the Zoom app OR in person at our Centres in Sector 57, Gurgaon or Navi Mumbai.
Contact
Abhishek Joshi: +91 981020 6203
Priyanka Shukla: +91 959428 0000
Email: innerjourneys11@gmail.com
(Read profiles of our facilitators here)
Session Fee
₹7000 per session
Session Timings
3:00 pm – 5:00 pm IST, Monday to Saturday
Sessions are subject to availability. Please book at least one week in advance.
You deserve relationships that feel safe, supportive, and emotionally nourishing. Healing trauma bonding is not about changing who you are—it is about returning to who you have always been.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is trauma bonding the same as being in love?
Trauma bonding can feel like love, but it is rooted in survival rather than emotional safety. It develops when intense emotional connection is created through cycles of pain, fear, abandonment, and intermittent affection. True love feels steady, respectful, and safe, while trauma bonds often feel consuming, anxious, and confusing. Many people mistake trauma bonding for love because it mirrors early attachment patterns formed in childhood.
Can trauma bonding exist without physical abuse?
Yes. Trauma bonding commonly forms in relationships involving emotional neglect, manipulation, control, gaslighting, abandonment threats, or inconsistent affection. Physical abuse is not required. The bond is created through emotional dependency and nervous system conditioning, not through visible harm alone. Many individuals remain in emotionally abusive relationships for years without realizing a trauma bond is present.
How long does it take to heal trauma bonds?
Healing is not linear and does not follow a fixed timeline. For some, awareness itself begins the healing process. Deeper healing depends on factors such as childhood attachment wounds, nervous system regulation, emotional safety, and consistent inner work. With the right therapeutic support, many clients begin noticing shifts within weeks or months, while full integration may take longer. What matters most is safety, patience, and compassionate guidance.
Will hypnotherapy feel emotional or intense?
Hypnotherapy does not need to be overwhelming or emotionally intense to be effective. In trauma-informed hypnotherapy, sessions are paced gently, prioritising safety, regulation, and subconscious re-patterning rather than emotional catharsis. Some emotions may surface naturally, but clients remain aware, in control, and supported throughout the process. Many people report feeling calmer, lighter, and more grounded after sessions.
Inner Journeys 