Break the old cycle, bring in new love

Most times as a service provider, Prasanna Gettu, co-founder of the International Foundation of Crime Prevention and Victim Care (PCVC), is more fearful and cognizant of the dangers their rescued women face, than those women themselves. “The victim/survivor, it seems, forgets where the safety ends and abuse begins,” she says.
Some years ago, ahead of freeing a woman and her children from a violent partner, Prasanna and her team had carefully charted out the operation.“We would pick up her and the children as soon as they returned from school and leave by 2pm - approximately four hours before her husband arrived home from work,” says Prasanna. “As we waited with the children in the car and found no sign of the mother, we went up to their apartment to check on her and found her calmly ironing her husband’s clothes.”
“She said to us that his office wear needed to be in order for him to leave on time the next morning, and that it stressed him out a great deal when this wasn’t done.”
Prinsa, a 31-year-old woman from Thuckalay in Kanyakumari, was hacked to death by her husband in December last year, when she began to style herself differently after joining a beautician course. In November, a UP man and his family killed his ex-girlfriend and chopped her body into pieces after she decided to marry someone else. But every such act - often delusively labelled as a ‘crime of passion’ - points to certain deep-rooted and sabotaging psychological behaviours and responses that keep victims/survivors in what is called a ‘trauma bond’ with the perpetrator, effectively blinding them from identifying red flags and pulling out.
While financial dependence has often been spoken of as a key factor that keeps women and gender minorities trapped in abusive relationships, the mental health indicators stemming from childhood that preserve that trauma bond, rarely make their way into the discourse.
To break it down, trauma bonds are emotional attachment bonds that are created in childhood years and strengthened through recurring, cyclical patterns of abuse and devaluation in adulthood. They are perpetuated through intermittent positive reinforcement that could come in the form of rewards, and punishments that appear like the abuser’s love language. While trauma bonds can form between any individual higher in social, cultural and economic hierarchies and those below them – parents and children, a spiritual leader and their followers, an employer and their subordinate – they most evidently manifest in intimate partner relationships, as these are often perceived as safety nets second only to the biological family in cultures like India.
According to Crimes in India 2018, in 93.9% of cases, the rapist is someone known to the victim—family, friends, neighbours, employer, online friend or live-in partner. A 2020 report in the British Medical Journal says one in three women in India is likely to have been subjected to intimate partner violence, but only one in 10 of these women formally report the offence.
However, it isn't just physical or sexual violence, but also emotional neglect, domination and gaslighting behaviour that are common in trauma bonds.
Even among educated women like Shraddha Walker, trauma bonds can be hard to break due to lack of support systems within the family and outside.
“Individuals whose important needs were not met as children; including those who faced emotional neglect, abandonment, or abuse – physical, emotional or sexual – grow up to become adults who subconsciously seek relationships that feel familiar to those early emotional experiences,” says Deepti Khemchandani, a trauma-informed psychotherapist (a mental health professional who works with the understanding and sensitivity that early traumatic experiences shape adult behavioural patterns). “But what feels like home isn’t always safe, and it takes some courage to unlearn, and a whole lot of psychoeducation to recognise this. In India, the cultural stigma of leaving an abusive marriage, and normalisation of violence and emotional neglect, make things a lot harder for an abused person to understand without guilt or shame, that they deserve better.”
Several organisations also recognise that victim/survivors may carry Stockholm Syndrome-like responses, wherein they feel a strong emotional bond with the abuser because he’s the father of their children and ‘provider’ to the family. They may have grown up watching male figures in their home exhibiting violence, and subconsciously seek the same qualities in intimate partners, because that’s the only kind of ‘love’ and patriarchal ownership they have ever known. “Even today, some of our women perceive qualities such as their partners' demands to cut off all other relationship ties; overt possessiveness, and constant supervision, as indicators of ‘true love’,” says Prasanna.
Several women rescued from domestic violence situations and taken into shelters even consensually, refuse to eat in the first few days. “Initially, we think they aren’t happy with the food, but later, we learn that they don’t want to eat knowing that their husbands or partners back home may be going hungry,” says Prasanna. “But, with our risk assessment experience, we are most alarmed when they say they want to go back to the violent environment they fled. Because, walking out of violence is the most crucial, but also the most dangerous thing a woman does; once the perpetrator realises that their power over the victim/survivor is challenged, they are highly triggered, alert and violent,” says Prasanna.
Which is why for every client who makes this choice, PCVC charts out a safety plan that secures her and allows her to recover, without any contact with the perpetrator.
“If you were the child whose needs weren’t met, you invariably scramble with self-identity and self-worth as an adult, when suddenly being swamped with 15 calls a day checking on your whereabouts, or constant glorification of your physical appearance (behaviours defined as ‘love bombing’) in the early stages of your relationship, may feel like love and protection, and not compulsive, and violating of your boundaries,” says counselling psychologist Saras Bhaskar. On the other hand, the abuser may find themselves entitled to certain power dynamics from childhood conditioning too. "They may have been showered with everything they desired as children, or denied the love and attention they needed while growing up. They then end up placing the onus on their partner to fulfil all those unmet needs," says Saras.
This is also where decolonial therapy work — interventions developed to navigate the Indian context and its complex caste, class and relationship enmeshments with family and the community — comes in.
The first challenge is often to find answers to ‘Do I want to be with him/her/them’, as opposed to ‘does he/she/they want me’, or, ‘do I love and respect this person’, rather than ‘what can I do to make him/her/them love and respect me’. For most people – especially women and gender minorities who have grown up in violent, critical or neglectful homes — to identify oneself as a person with needs in itself, can take painstaking work and awareness-building.
But this knowledge is easier to imbibe today than ever, thanks to a wealth of literature that new-age trauma-informed therapists such as Neha Bhat (@indiansextherapist on Instagram); are constantly putting out. Information on simple ways to regulate your nervous system, practicing nonviolent communication, and mindfulness, also make your journey easier.
Unfortunately, a lot of trauma bonding happens within the LGBTQIA+ community as well, and this too has primarily to do with the lack of early parental support and care. “The queer community wants the same markers for a successful relationship as the heterosexual society does, because many of them are estranged from their families and finding a partner who is like you, accepts you, and stays with you, translates to safety,” says queer-affirmative somatic psychotherapist, Sneha Rooh.
“Queer members in trauma bonds know when there is abuse, but feel like they’re walking on eggshells. They feel this intense longing – which comes from a hormonal rush – when they’re trying to leave the relationship, because they fear that if they walk away, they may not find anyone else who accepts them (a common trauma response in people from gender/sexual minorities),” says Sneha. “When someone in such a situation is seeking answers, therapists, friends and families must be patient, acknowledge that they are breaking out of a very strong traumatic conditioning, and stand by them until they gather strength to leave.”
You know you’re in a trauma bond when:
- Your abusive partner is overly self-critical after hurting you and you are always covering up for them
- You comply/please them to feel loved and avoid being discarded or punished
- You stop expressing yourself to avoid conflict
- You are scared to upset them or fear leaving, because it may escalate abuse
How to heal from a trauma bond:
- If you cannot immediately leave, separate yourself from your partner as often as possible
- Spend time alone to reflect on the triggers that are causing you to hurt but also stay
- Find a support group/ trusted friends to counter the loneliness you may feel
- If you are unable to spot red flags, make a note of green flags for clarity; things you truly want from a relationship
- Educate yourself, read up literature online
- See a trauma-informed with an open mind
- Know that you can and will break the cycle through self-awareness and self-work