Nadas and trauma bonding

[Guest guest]

I'm beginning to think that how I was treated by my nada may have resulted in

" trauma bonding " for me; I think she broke my will, and I just kind of became

completely enmeshed with nada (and dad) up until I was about 33 or so.

Here's an excerpt from an interesting article about what " trauma bonding " is and

how it occurs, and it really resonates with me. Its when the child's (or adult

victim's) abuser also becomes her rescuer, but then becomes her abuser again,

over and over:

" Many victims of severe and unrelenting trauma, whether domestic violence,

incest, or ritual abuse, will find that they feel anxious when alone, and fear

abandonment and isolation. The over-dependent characteristics are NOT a

personality fault, but a result of the chronic abuse. This is often rooted in

the fact that as a child, the trauma survivor was not only a CAPTIVE to their

abuse, but they depended upon their perpetrator for food, shelter, or other

necessities. In addition, with ritual abuse, a small child will often be

abandoned for periods of time, to increase their dependency upon the very people

who are abusing them. Any two or three year old will be almost insanely grateful

to be rescued from a small box that they have been confined within for hours, or

from the dark confines of a musty basement where they have been left for a day

or two. Even the most abusive perpetrator will then become the child's rescuer,

which is the foundation of trauma bonding. In trauma bonding, the person's

abuser will be perceived as the one who delivers and rescues from the abuse, as

well as the tormentor. This creates a psychological ambivalence that creates

dissociation in a young child. The very helplessness and terror that are

instilled by the abuse, cause the child (or later, the adult) to reach out to

the only available hand for relief: the perpetrator. And the perpetrator WILL

rescue and stop the abuse, or take the child out of the confines of their pain,

but for a price: their unrelenting loyalty and obedience. This is the traumatic

underpinning of all cult programming that I have seen: a combination of abuse

and kindness; terror and rescue; degradation and praise. "

I wasn't confined in a box or a closet or a basement, but I was " frozen out " of

my mother's good graces for periods of time (which felt like abandonment),

threatened with being sent away to an orphanage, forced to play outside when it

was uncomfortably hot or cold or wet so she could be alone, and then I'd be

insanely grateful when she'd seem to forgive me and act kindly toward me again.

Then there were the unpredictable episodes of terrifying rage and physical

punishment alternating with kind behaviors.

It seems to me that emotional dysregulation, black-and-white thinking, transient

psychotic breaks with reality (delusional thinking, paranoia, etc.) and

unpredictable rages are GUARANTEED to produce " trauma bonding " in the young

child of a bpd parent.

How could trauma bonding be avoided under those conditions?

Here's the rest of the article

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/ritual_abuse/50317

-Annie