Transformation

Sometimes it can be difficult to find healthy love because we have someone in our lives, or a propensity towards getting hooked in to relationships that are characterized by strong ‘ups and downs’ and a lot of “passion” and drama. In the media and songs, this type of relationship is often celebrated and glamorized, but it reality, it can be highly destructive. It often feels like an addiction or a cycle we can’t break free from, which can leave us exhausted and resistant to connection.

It can happen even when we’re not together with someone, just through how we feel when we meet them, and all the anxiety and emotional rollercoaster around engaging with someone we like.

Trauma bonding

Trauma bonding is a psychological and emotional phenomenon that occurs when we develop a strong, often unhealthy, attachment to someone who isn’t healthy for us. It may be that they have caused us harm or been abusive in some way, or it might simply that they’re just not good for us in any number of ways but we still intensely want them. This type of experience is characterized by a cycle of volatile emotional highs and lows, where moments of kindness, love, connection, or remorse are alternated with periods of manipulation, rejection, control, or pain.

We often find ourselves clinging to these connections because the unpredictable nature of the relationship can create a confusing mix of fear, hope, and dependency. The brain becomes conditioned to associate moments of affection or reconciliation with the hope of future happiness, making it difficult to break free even when we recognize the harm. This cycle reinforces feelings of loyalty, guilt, or obligation, despite the negative impact on our well-being.

Trauma bonding can be particularly powerful because it exploits our need for connection and our tendency to seek closeness, even in damaging circumstances. Recognizing the patterns involved is an important step toward healing, as it allows us to understand that such bonds are rooted in emotional manipulation and fear, rather than genuine love or mutual respect..

EXERCISE

Journaling

~ Set aside time to write honestly about your feelings, experiences, and patterns related to unhealthy relationship you may have been caught up in. Focus on recognizing the cycle of highs and lows, and acknowledge any unresolved emotions like guilt, fear, or anger. Writing helps externalize emotions and gain clarity.

Ritual for restoring freedom

~ Prepare your space. Use sage, palo santo, or a similar purifying herb to cleanse your space and your aura of negative energies and light a candle.

~ Take your power back. Come in to meditation and imagine yourself standing inside a protective circle, with the person you’ve been tied to on the outside, unable to enter. See/feel/imagine any psychic ‘chords’ between you like tubes connected to each of your bodies. Where on your body do you think they might be? Which chakras are they connected to perhaps?

~ Start to draw back in any power you’ve given away to this person in the form of squandered energy, visualizing this as light travelling along the chords and back into your body, or however intuitively makes sense for you. You might need to repeat this exercise a number of times before you feel like you’ve drawn all the energy back in. You can also give them back their energy as well, so you’re both clear.

~ Cut chords. Once that’s completed, and once you’re ready, you can imagine taking a sword or dagger and cutting the chords that are tying you together.

~ Revoke contracts. If you’ve made any promises to each other, or any unconscious ‘deals’ this will also need to be adressed. Think about your dynamics and if you had a contract, imagine what it would say. Where were you subtly, for example, trading sex for security, or your emotional support for a sense of feeling worthy? You can vizualise this contract in your mind or you can write a physical version of the contract on paper. Then either in your mind or physically write ‘void’ over it, take a flame to it and release those binds.

~ Contact your relationship’s egreggore. Each relationship has a kind of ‘third party’ being that is a composite of you and them that exists in the subconscious. This being will naturally act to reinforce the patterns that you have created with this partner. It’s important to reassign new roles to this being so that they support your new priorities. Find a safe space in nature in your imagination and bring this being into your awareness, in whatever form they come. Maybe they can show you how they are currently influencing your connection. Tell them about what you need now, and ask that they support you both to go your separate ways, flourishing separately rather than together.

~ Emotional release. Finally, for the emotional aspect, imagine a boat on a river, tied to it’s banks. From the shore, take all your memories and emotional attachments to them and visualize placing them on this boat. Once this is done, you can release the boat to float down the river to the ocean, letting the water dissolve all the blockages and weight of the past.

~ Space reset. Returning to your ordinary awareness, extinguish your candle and once again smudge yourself and you room with herbs or incense to clear the space of any residue.

In this way, you release each other back to your own paths.