7 Steps to Break Trauma Bonds With a Narcissist

— Dr. Jamie Huysman Founder ED and Milena Stankovic Co-Founder —

Trauma bonding with a manipulative narcissist or psychopath can feel like an unbreakable connection, rooted in survival mechanisms. 

This bond often fosters a biochemical and psychological addiction to the abuse cycle. While trauma bonds are undeniably powerful, they are not unbreakable. Breaking free requires both strategy and resilience. 

In the following lines, you’ll discover a step-by-step guide to help you understand:

• what trauma bonds are, 
• why they form, 
• and most importantly, how to break free from their grip. 

By the end, you’ll gain clarity, actionable strategies, and the solution needed to reclaim your life and emotional well-being.

Here are actionable steps to begin liberating yourself.

1. Embrace Your Anger and Acknowledge the Abuse

Narcissists fear your anger because it threatens their control. That is why they demonize any valid anger you express toward them to depict you as “unstable” or “bitter”. 

They are saying you are the one “not letting things go” rather than the more accurate perspective of you having legitimate reactions to their inhumane cruelty. 

You should recognize this manipulation and channel your anger constructively.

The narcissist uses gaslighting and projection throughout the relationship to subdue and silence your authentic anger toward them. 

They do this because they know if you got in touch with it, you would be more likely to ground yourself in the reality of the abuse that is occurring and be able to leave them with more confidence.

The key to accepting the real anger you feel toward the narcissist isn’t necessarily about confronting them with it but instead harnessing this anger strategically to detach from them.

You can use anger to fuel you toward cutting ties with them, going No Contact, and standing up for yourself, protecting and defending yourself in healthy ways. 

2. Break Your Patterns

Trauma bonds cause victims to develop certain patterns – patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that are used to cope with the trauma of the relationship. 

It’s important to begin interrupting these patterns which center the abuser as the focus of your existence and create “periods of peace” away from your abuser so you can learn to live life without them.

One of the most productive ways you can do this is by replacing your usual self-destructive patterns associated with the narcissist with an activity that allows you to “level up”.

It can be an activity serving your self-care, healing, career goals, mental health, or physical fitness.

This has the added benefit of nourishing your well-being over time, heightening your confidence, and reminding you that you do deserve better. It is one of the first steps to creating a life you look forward to living away from the narcissist.

If you have a pattern of always trying to defend yourself or explain yourself in response to their gaslighting, you might start to break that pattern by walking away from arguments before they escalate. 

You can also use that time journaling about the incident and how it made you feel. This has the double benefit of resisting their gaslighting attempts.

3. Remove the Abuser from the Pedestal

In the beginning, the abuser may have been charming and used tactics such as love bombing – excessive contact, flattery, attention, and affection to make you value them in your life. 

This is because they knew they could not win you over with their authentic self. Likely, they also knew you had more options than them and viewed you as “out of their league.” 

Many narcissists are attracted to partners they deem “special and unique,” that they can show off like trophies and benefit from being associated with.

As the abuse cycle continues, the abuser slowly but surely erodes your sense of self-confidence and self-respect through manipulation, degradation, and devaluation to maintain control over you and isolate you. 

You begin to see them as the “prize” to be won over.

In order to break the trauma bond, you have to break the narcissist’s illusion of false desirability, created by the biochemical and psychological addiction that is created by the abuse cycle. 

Their abuse has trained you to see yourself as “below” them when in reality you surpass them in many ways. That is why they targeted you in the first place.

Instead of engaging in self-criticism and self-blame, they have conditioned you to engage in, start identifying the negative qualities that make them an undesirable partner for you and for other empathic people:

• What turns you off about them? 
• What did you initially dislike about their personality, appearance, interests, hobbies, and demeanor? 
• What will you not miss about the narcissist once they’re gone? 
• What can you do once you’re free of them, that you couldn’t do before? 
• What will you be free to do, feel, and think? 
• How confident will you be? 
• What burdens can you now let go of? 
• What thoughts and triggers will you no longer be haunted by on a daily basis? 
• What special occasions will no longer be sabotaged or tainted by their presence?

Remember, this is an abuser who has violated and betrayed you on many levels – do not agonize over or shy away from being ruthless when thinking about their negative traits and the negative impact their behavior has had on your life. 

After all, they did not think twice about disparaging you with falsehoods – the least you can do is center yourself on the truth about them. 

This exercise will help you to see them accurately rather than through the rose-colored lenses of the love bombing and devaluation cycle. 

It will ultimately remind you that being free from them is a blessing and will give you more of an incentive to cut ties.

4. Reclaim Your Unique Strengths

We know narcissists provoke jealousy on purpose and manufacture love triangles. This gets us to compete or compare and lose sight of what makes us irreplaceable.

The trauma bond convinces you that the narcissist is irreplaceable. The truth is, the narcissist is the one who is replaceable.

There are plenty of similar manipulators who use the same tactics, donning a charming false mask for a while, only to eventually reveal their cold, callous true selves.

You, however, are likely an empathic, kind, attractive, talented, and supportive person who has the capacity to give healthy love. You have specific traits, internal and external qualities that can’t be replicated in anyone else.

Connect with what makes you irreplaceable each day, and you’ll gradually realize that, regardless of the narcissist’s actions, they no longer have access to your unique qualities and the benefits you bring to their life.

As you break the trauma bond, r in ecall what the narcissist claimed to dislike about you or tried to sabotage. Then, during or after the process of breaking the bond, focus on doing more of that.

What narcissists claim are your weaknesses are actually your strengths.

These are the same qualities and behaviors they feared in you and tried to discourage because these made you powerful and independent of them.

5. Connect With Your Ego

It is not empathy, compassion, or forgiveness that breaks the trauma bond with a narcissist. 

Surprisingly, it is your anger, your ego, and pride that has the potential to bring you back into a healthy state of self-defense and break through the mental fog with more clarity and certainty about how unacceptable the abuse you’re experiencing is.

The concept of the “ego” has been demonized in spiritual communities, but it is one that can save your life. 

This is especially true if you are a woman who has been socially conditioned to bask in humility and sacrifice in your relationships. 

You may have been taught that you shouldn’t be “cocky” about yourself or take pride in your appearance or achievements.

However, having a healthy ego is necessary for remembering who you are and what you deserve. 

Take time every day to connect with your ego and ask how it really feels about this relationship and how you feel about being mistreated – not just what your coping mechanisms have taught you to feel.

Society may demonize the ego, but suppressing the ego only suppresses your natural defense system against predators. It’s all about using the ego strategically.

Avoid using the ego to exhaust yourself arguing with the narcissist to excessively prove your worth to them or to participate in their love triangles by trying to compete. 

Avoid allowing the narcissist to use love bombing to lure your ego back into the relationship. Use your ego to tap back into your natural survival, self-protective instincts, and your authentic anger at being violated in order to detach and exit from the relationship instead.

When we take pride in who we are and connect to the genuine outrage of being violated, we become more aware of their disrespect, cut through the mental fog, and resist mistreatment with greater clarity and certainty, as this emotional state activates our self-defense mode.

Even when self-love and self-respect have been eroded by the effects of trauma – anger and pride, as well as outrage at having your self-concept belittled – can still kick in to save your life when you need it the most, because the ego wants to defend you and protect your rights.

Without anger or the ego, many victims of narcissists misuse empathy and compassion to sympathize with and rationalize the narcissist’s behavior – or to overexplain themselves and their feelings in hopes that the narcissist will change.

The narcissist or psychopath only uses your empathy against you to exploit you further and to have you stay in the relationship. Instead, the ego helps us use that same energy to detach from the relationship.

6. Lean Into Disgust and Fear Toward Your Abuser

From a young age, especially women, are taught to always be polite, demure, and compliant to protect the feelings of others. 

They are conditioned to excise this natural defense mechanism from their survival toolkit for the sake of social conditioning. 

You may find yourself rationalizing the red flags in your relationships and overriding the natural sense of disgust you feel around someone who turns you off with their actions or words, just to protect their feelings.

However, when you “lean into” the natural disgust that the abuser makes you feel every day they mistreat you, you allow nature to guide you away from predators and back to safety.

A good way to “reality check” with yourself about the narcissist’s true nature is to ask yourself, “How would I feel if someone I didn’t know was doing this to me?” 

This will help you take the more detached, curious perspective of the narcissist as a “stranger” and will give you a lens to see how their actions would look if you were not in a close relationship with them.

Many survivors of intimate partner violence find themselves stuck in a “fear, obligation, guilt” cycle where they fear they will “miss out” on the narcissist suddenly morphing into a great partner for them. 

In reality, they will only “miss out” on more abuse when they leave. It is the narcissist who loses someone who truly cared for them – you, on the other hand, regain your freedom and your life when you lose them.

7. Surround Yourself With Supportive People

Narcissistic individuals try to micromanage even our perception of the positive feedback we get from others. 

This means they will try to detract from the compliments and healthy praise others give you and try to instill in you the falsehood that you have no support system apart from them.

That’s why it’s so important to maintain connections with empathic people who can give you the accurate feedback you deserve, that give you a mirror to the “true” reality of your identity that the narcissist tries to distort. 

If your narcissistic partner has isolated you from friends and family, you can begin to reconnect with these loved ones or seek community support in the form of safe, validating support groups.

It can also help to keep a list of some of the positive feedback you’ve received in the past and remind yourself that the real reason narcissists were so intent on undermining this feedback was that they knew it would give you a source of validation outside of them.

8. Go No Contact or Low Contact With Abuser

One of the most important steps to breaking a trauma bond is getting substantial time and space away from an abuser. Research tells us that toxic love can be akin to drug addiction. 

Detoxing from the trauma bond requires no contact or low contact, especially if you’re unable to go completely no contact due to circumstances like sharing children or a home with the narcissist, or if the trauma bond is still too strong to break immediately.

Even if you can’t go no contact yet, minimize your effort and energy toward the abuser. Redirect the time and energy you’d normally spend on them into nourishing and loving yourself.

Make sure you give the narcissist an excuse like being busy with a project or feeling ill to ward off their suspicions so they do not suspect anything is wrong and do not escalate into a narcissistic rage as you prepare to leave them.

9. Seek professional trauma-informed support

Healing from a trauma bond often involves processing the trauma inflicted by the narcissist. While seeing a professional is helpful, joining a support group can also be incredibly powerful.

One such group is TAR Anon™, a free, online, peer-to-peer support group for survivors of toxic abuse, trauma, and narcissistic relationships. 

This virtual, anonymous space, hosted by the STAR Network™, provides a safe, neuroregulated environment where survivors can connect, share their experiences, and begin their healing journey together.

TAR Anon™ offers compassionate support from others who truly understand the struggles of overcoming narcissistic abuse, helping survivors rebuild self-worth, resilience, and trust in a supportive community.

Breaking Free: A Journey Worth Taking

Healing from a trauma bond is a gradual process. By acknowledging your worth, disrupting harmful patterns, and surrounding yourself with positive influences, you can break free from the cycle of abuse. 

Each step brings you closer to a life of empowerment and peace – free from the grip of a narcissist.

One of the most supportive steps you can take on this journey is joining TAR Anon. This free, virtual support group offers a safe space to connect with others who understand what you’re going through and are committed to healing together. 

If you’re ready to take the next step in your recovery, join TAR Anon and start building the life of empowerment and peace you deserve.