How to Break a Trauma Bond with a Narcissist? — A Commentary on Why Leaving Is Not the Hard Part
Among all modern relationship terms—ghosting, breadcrumbing, love bombing—the phrase trauma bond provokes the most polarized reactions. Some people insist it is a clinical, valid psychological pattern; others dismiss it as an exaggerated label used to explain unhealthy attachment. Yet in conversations with survivors of narcissistic abuse, one sentiment appears again and again: breaking a trauma bond feels less like leaving a person and more like escaping a belief system you did not realize had been installed in you. This commentary argues that breaking a trauma bond with a narcissist is not a matter of willpower but a dismantling of psychological conditioning. And more importantly, society’s simplistic expectations—“just leave” or “you stayed because you wanted to”—profoundly misunderstand what trauma bonding actually is. If we want to help people break these bonds, we must challenge those misconceptions rather than repeating them.