Mohamad Shabib
MACP, CCC · October 4, 2026
Trauma bonding is a strong pull toward someone who is hurting you. It tends to form when harm alternates with kindness or remorse, and when one person holds more power than the other. It can explain why you miss them, defend them, or go back after deciding you were done. It is a response to a pattern, not a flaw in you and not a diagnosis.
A trauma bond can form with a partner, a parent, a boss, a group leader or a trafficker. If you would rather talk to someone than read, our page on therapy for trauma bonding covers who you would see and what it costs; sessions are online only, with no office to visit.
Donald Dutton, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, and Susan Painter developed the theory of traumatic bonding and tested it in a 1993 study of women who had left abusive partners. The shorter term "trauma bond" is widely associated with the writing of Patrick Carnes, an author from the addiction field, as the Safe & Together Institute notes.
It is not a diagnosis: trauma bonding does not appear in the DSM or the ICD. It describes a relationship pattern and the attachment it leaves behind.
What is a trauma bond in a relationship? With a partner, it often means someone who is at times frightening, cruel or controlling and at other times affectionate, sorry or generous, while you do more and more of the adjusting to keep the good times coming. With a parent, it can start in childhood, when the person you feared also fed and housed you. At work, it can be a manager who humiliates you in meetings, praises you in private, and controls your shifts, references or work permit.
Research points to two conditions working together. One is a power imbalance: one person controls more of the money, decisions, friendships or threat of harm. The other is intermittent treatment, where kindness and harm are mixed unpredictably, so a good week after a bad stretch feels like something to protect.
Relief adds to the pull. When the person who frightened you is also the one who ends the fear, with an apology, a gift or sudden tenderness, the relief attaches to them. Isolation adds weight: as friends and family fall away, fewer people are around to say this is not normal. Popular explanations that call a trauma bond a dopamine or oxytocin "addiction" go further than the research on trauma bonding has gone.
What is trauma bond withdrawal? It is an informal phrase, not a clinical term, for what many people feel after cutting contact: cravings to hear from the person, urges to check their social media or ask mutual friends about them, broken sleep, and a low mood that can make going back look like the only relief. These feelings are common, tend to come in waves, and do not mean leaving was a mistake.
You may be trauma bonded if several of these sound familiar:
This is not a diagnostic checklist. It is a way to notice a pattern, and the pattern says more about what happened to you than about who you are.
Online lists of the stages of trauma bonding vary, but most run from love bombing, through growing dependence, criticism, gaslighting and giving in, to losing your sense of self and feeling hooked on the cycle.
These lists come from popular writing, not from studies. Research describes conditions that make a bond more likely, mainly a power imbalance and harm that alternates with kindness, not a fixed sequence. Some relationships begin with intense affection; others change slowly or swing back and forth for years. If your story skips a stage or runs in a different order, the pull you feel is no less real.
In their 1993 study, Dutton and Painter assessed 75 women who had recently left abusive relationships, 50 of which had involved physical violence, using interviews and questionnaires at separation and six months later. Attachment to the former partner fell by about 27% over those six months. Total abuse, how intermittent the abuse was and the power differential together explained 55% of the variance in attachment at six months.
A 2022 scoping review by Casassa, Knight and Mengo looked at trauma bonding in sex trafficking. It covered 15 English-language articles, published after 2013, on sex trafficking in Western countries, and found four features:
No article in that review described how trauma bonds could be severed and replaced with healthy attachments. Advice on loosening a trauma bond, ours included, rests mostly on clinical experience rather than trials.
Both sources have limits: small samples, mostly women, and specific settings. They support the idea that power and unpredictable harm build a bond, but they do not tell us how common trauma bonding is or how long it usually lasts.
Yes. The research above mostly involved women, but a power imbalance and unpredictable harm can exist in any relationship. Statistics Canada's report on intimate partner violence (Cotter, 2021, using 2018 data) found that 44% of ever-partnered women and 36% of ever-partnered men reported some form of intimate partner violence since age 15. Psychological abuse was by far the most common type, reported by 43% of women and 35% of men. The report also notes that research has found women disproportionately experience the most severe forms, and 37% of women who had experienced intimate partner violence said they had been afraid of a partner.
These are intimate partner violence figures, not trauma-bond figures: they show how many people have lived with the conditions a bond can grow in.
Men may be slower to name what happened, especially when the harm was mostly emotional. In same-sex relationships, a partner may threaten to out you. Anyone can dial 2-1-1, and Interligne serves 2SLGBTQI+ people; both are in the help lines at the end of this article.
The bond is one reason people stay or go back, rarely the only one. Money, housing, children, a visa or sponsorship tied to the relationship, a faith community that may side with them, and threats can weigh just as much. The period around a separation can also be more dangerous, so a safety plan comes before any big step. There is more on coercive control in our guide to Why Does He Do That?, including how it narrows choices that look simple from outside.
The label also has critics. David Mandel of the Safe & Together Institute argues that the concept can work against survivors: it pulls attention onto the survivor's psychology and away from the abuser's tactics, and from the ways professionals and systems can make leaving harder. Trauma bonding names a pull you may feel; it does not explain away the choices of the person causing harm.
Most people loosen a trauma bond gradually rather than breaking it in one move: get safer, cut or limit contact where that is safe, make the cycle visible, rebuild support, and work through what keeps the bond in place. There is no reliable shortcut, and plans that promise a fixed number of days go beyond the evidence. That can include:
If the person is a narcissist. That is often the word people search with, and the same steps apply. You do not need to diagnose them to protect yourself from how they treat you. Expect pressure to return once you pull away. "Hoovering" is a popular name for attempts to draw you back: sudden apologies, gifts, an emergency only you can fix, messages through friends, or promises that this time will be different.
Can you break a trauma bond and stay together? While the harm continues, the cycle that builds the bond keeps running, so it is very hard to loosen from inside. TEO does not provide couples counselling while abuse or coercive control is ongoing, the same stance we take in our Why Does He Do That? guide. You can still get individual support, and what you decide about the relationship is your call.
There is no set timeline. In Dutton and Painter's study, attachment had fallen by about 27% on average six months after the women left, which means many of them still felt a real pull at that point. Renewed contact, even one message, can bring the feeling back.
There is often grief too, for the relationship and for who you believed the person was; support for grief after a relationship ends can sit alongside this work. Progress is uneven. You may go weeks feeling clearer, then miss them badly around an anniversary or news about them. That is common and is not failure. Cravings that feel like withdrawal are a reason to lean on support, not a sign you are doing it wrong.
If someone you care about seems trauma bonded, the most useful thing is usually to stay in their life, because abuse often works by cutting people off.
You may also see the Signal for Help, a single one-handed gesture the Canadian Women's Foundation launched in April 2020, designed to be made silently on a video call. It means "reach out to me safely", not "call the authorities right away". Reach out in a way that is safe for them, for example a call with questions they can answer yes or no, or a general message by text or email, and let them lead. If they are in immediate danger, call 911.
It may be time to talk to someone if:
Long-term harm can leave habits that outlast the relationship, such as the fawn response, where pleasing and appeasing feel safer than saying no. Working on the memories and reactions that keep a bond in place is part of trauma therapy.
At TEO, therapy for trauma bonding is individual therapy only; it is never booked as couples counselling. Sessions are online, so choose a time and place where you cannot be overheard. TEO is not a domestic violence advocacy, legal or emergency service.
Rola Shbib, Registered Social Worker, RSW (Ontario) #866715 with the OCSWSSW, ASIST-trained in suicide intervention, works online in English with clients in all six provinces we serve.
Mohamad Shabib, MACP, a Canadian Certified Counsellor with the CCPA (#11249205), trained in EMDR (Advanced, through an EMDRIA-approved programme) and Internal Family Systems Levels 1 and 2, works online in English or Arabic with clients in all six provinces.
With Mohamad, EMDR is one way to work with memories that still feel vivid, and IFS parts work looks at conflicting sides of you, such as loyalty to the person alongside anger at them. Our page on narcissistic abuse and trauma bonding therapy has more detail, and you can ask to start with Rola.
Individual sessions are $150 per 60 minutes, no referral is needed, and the first step is a free 15-minute consultation on a video call or a scheduled phone call. You can book a free consultation or text (519) 760-5211 with a question first. Use a device and number the other person cannot check: booking may send confirmations or reminders, and replies go to the number you texted from. The text line is not a crisis service.
Several lines are listed as multilingual, and you can raise worries such as immigration status, housing or children. These lines appear on the Government of Canada's Get help now page.
This article is general information about trauma bonding. It is not a diagnosis, a safety plan or legal advice. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in crisis, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7).
No. Trauma bonding is not a diagnosis in the DSM or the ICD. It describes an attachment that research links to two conditions in a relationship: one person holding more power, and treatment that swings between harm and warmth. Naming it can explain why you miss someone who hurt you; it does not mean something is wrong with you.
The seven-stage lists online usually run from love bombing through criticism and gaslighting to losing yourself and feeling hooked on the cycle, but they come from popular writing rather than research, and they vary from source to source. Studies describe the conditions that build a bond, mainly a power imbalance and alternating harm and kindness, not a fixed sequence. Your experience does not have to match a list to be real.
There is no set timeline. In a study of 75 women who had recently left abusive partners, attachment to the former partner had dropped by about 27% on average six months later, so many still felt a pull at that point. Renewed contact can bring the feeling back. A slow, uneven loosening is common and is not a failure.
While the harm continues, the cycle that builds the bond keeps running, which makes the bond very hard to loosen from inside it. TEO does not provide couples counselling while abuse or coercive control is ongoing; individual support and a safety plan come first, and any decision about the relationship stays yours. If you are in immediate danger, call 911; if you are in crisis, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7).
Yes, as individual therapy online. Rola Shbib, RSW, and Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, work with clients in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador. Sessions are $150 for 60 minutes, no referral is needed, and the first step is a free 15-minute consultation on a video call or a scheduled phone call. It is not a crisis service: if you are in danger, call 911.
Book a free, no-pressure consultation. We'll talk about what you're going through and figure out together if we're the right fit.
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