Overcome toxic relationship bonds and begin to heal Freeing yourself from a trauma bond can feel overwhelming. But with the right tools, you can let go of the past and move forward to a brighter future. This supportive workbook is filled with evidence-based strategies and exercises to help you break the cycle of abuse and thrive. Understand your experience—Learn what trauma bonding is and gain insight from the stories of other people who have experienced abuse. Discover tools for healing trauma—Build skills for breaking your toxic relationship with proven exercises like starting a walking meditation practice and rating your level of self-care. Beyond trauma—Explore the aftermath of leaving an abuser, including managing difficult emotions and grief, reclaiming your identity, avoiding relapse, and preparing to move forward with your new life. Empower yourself and take control of your future with this supportive workbook.

'If your relationship is so bad, why don't you just leave them?' 'If you were in such an abusive relationship, why did you stay with them for so long?' 'If you knew you were in a relationship with such a toxic person, why didn't you ask people for help?' If you've ever been asked these questions, aside from being ignorant and hurtful, you'll know it's beyond frustrating. The answer to the above questions, whilst it's complex and often confusing, can be given with two words: trauma bonded. If you find you're in a relationship that you know is so toxic that it's crushing your very being, but you can't bring yourself to leave, you may be in the clutches of a tight trauma bond. If you're constantly feeling on edge, forever working to appease your spouse to little avail and like you're constantly being chipped away at with their abusive behavior, then I can understand how emotionally shattering it feels to live this way. If in the same breath, it breaks your heart to even consider leaving them because you can't imagine life without them, then I can understand that feeling too; because I was trauma bonded to my abusive ex. From my own personal experience and from the experiences other survivors have opened up to me about, this book will cover the following: - What trauma bonding really is - The 7 stages that lead to you becoming trauma bonded - The parallels that Stockholm syndrome has with trauma bonding - The 5 stages you go through when you come to accept you're trauma bonded - The cognitive dissonance a trauma bond can cause - Breaking free from the traumatic bond This book will also include my own experiences and I'll draw upon those to help you really understand trauma bonding, and let you know that you're not alone in being shackled by this emotionally crippling bond. More importantly, this book will help you understand that the invisible chain that tethers you to your abuser can be broken.

Overcome toxic relationship bonds and begin to heal Freeing yourself from a trauma bond can feel overwhelming. But with the right tools, you can let go of the past and move forward to a brighter future. This supportive workbook is filled with evidence-based strategies and exercises to help you break the cycle of abuse and thrive. Understand your experience--Learn what trauma bonding is and gain insight from the stories of other people who have experienced abuse. Discover tools for healing trauma--Build skills for breaking your toxic relationship with proven exercises like starting a walking meditation practice and rating your level of self-care. Beyond trauma--Explore the aftermath of leaving an abuser, including managing difficult emotions and grief, reclaiming your identity, avoiding relapse, and preparing to move forward with your new life. Empower yourself and take control of your future with this supportive workbook.

Some really great books just keep getting better! For seventeen years The Betrayal Bond has been the primary source for therapists and patients wrestling the effects of emotional pain and harm caused by exploitation from someone they trusted. Divorce, litigation, incest and child abuse, domestic violence, kidnapping, professional exploitation and religious abuse are all areas of trauma bonding. These are situations and relationships of incredible intensity or importance lend themselves more easily to an exploitation of trust or power. In The Betrayal Bond, Dr. Carnes presents an in-depth study of these relationships; why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful. Dr. Carnes also gives a clear explanation of the bond that compels people to tolerate the intolerable, and for the first time, maps out the brain connection that makes being with hurtful people comparable to 'a drug of choice.' Most importantly, Carnes provides practical steps to identify compulsive attachment patterns and ultimately to change or end them for good. This new edition includes: New science for understanding how our brains can make a prison of bad relationships New assessments and insights based on 50,000 research participants A new section utilizing the latest findings in attachment research and narrative therapy to concretely rewrite and rescript bad experiences A redefinition of the factors contributing to addictive relationships

In this groundbreaking book, a leading clinical psychiatrist redefines how we think about and treat victims of trauma. A "stunning achievement" that remains a "classic for our generation." (Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., author of The Body Keeps the Score). Trauma and Recovery is revered as the seminal text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a broader political frame, Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war. Hailed by the New York Times as "one of the most important psychiatry works to be published since Freud," Trauma and Recovery is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how we heal and are healed.

Breaking up in normal circumstances is hard enough. If you throw a narcissist into the equation, it makes it all the more difficult. Not only are you left heartbroken from the separation, but the actions and behaviors of the narcissist post-break-up are nothing short of cruel, confusing, and downright crazymaking. You feel like your world has ended and you don't know how to rebuild it. In this short book, I want to use my own experience with a narcissist to highlight and outline the following for you: - discarding, and why the narcissist does this. This is a cruel tactic used by the narcissist to either punish you or because you have nothing left to give them. - what a narcissist does at the end of a relationship. Whilst all narcissists are different, you can count on one thing being consistent: their behavior. - how the narc feels and deals with the break-up. - the toxic narcissistic relationship pattern, so you can avoid being sucked into it once more. If you're looking to read this book, you're likely heartbroken and looking for some guidance, support, or understanding. As someone who has been through the hell of a narcissistic relationship, I can offer you all three, and I hope this book can help you make sense of this heartbreaking time.

Narcissistic abuse is a form of abuse that ensures victims are left emotionally drained, mentally exhausted, and devoid of any self-worth or self-esteem. I was a victim of a malignant narcissist for seven years of my life, and I know just how crushing it is to live such an abusive and suppressed life. The helplessness and detachment from reality that comes with narcissistic abuse are enough to keep you in the tight grip of the abuser for as long as they choose. However, I eventually found the courage to leave my abuser, but it didn't end there. As you may know, ending a relationship with a narcissist isn't that easy - even if it was the narc who did the breaking up. They don't just 'let you go' - they try to make sure you'll go through hell before you get one over on them. In this book, I want to offer you some guidance on this rarely-talked about aspect of an abusive relationship: how to deal with a narcissist when they're your ex. The chapter list is as follows: Why you shouldn't go back and why you need to move on Why you need to go 'no contact' and ways you can do this How to stop missing your abuser Understanding and dealing with 'hoovering' after a break-up Narcissistic stalking How to deal with 'flying monkeys' Survivor stories from two former narcissistic abuse victims Throughout the book, I also offer some of my own story too, in the hopes that this offers you a sense of familiarity. You'll likely find that thing things I went through are very similar to your own experiences, and the purpose of this book is to get you to the point where I'm currently at: healed and thriving.

A groundbreaking approach to transforming traumatic legacies passed down in families over generations, by an acclaimed expert in the field Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood. As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.

The instant New York Times bestseller By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing. In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really “normal” when it comes to health? Over four decades of clinical experience, Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of “normal” as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance. Now Maté brings his perspective to the great untangling of common myths about what makes us sick, connects the dots between the maladies of individuals and the declining soundness of society—and offers a compassionate guide for health and healing. Cowritten with his son Daniel, The Myth Of Normal is Maté’s most ambitious and urgent book yet.

Still struggling from the effects of an abusive relationship? - If you're feeling heartbroken over one particular individual and this heartache has been going on for a weirdly long time - If you are "stuck" on one person in your life, if you feel you are trauma-bonded to an individual and can't move past feeling heartbroken over them, then ... This book will work to eradicate that completely. But first, a Warning: Before we go further, let me make something abundantly clear: - This book is for you but it's not just an information product. - This book does not contain a "magic wand" that will bring you instant relief without having to do any work. - What I'm about to share with you takes both time and effort and has worked wonders for me and my private clients. And I believe it can help you too. - The exact process I'll be sharing with you has taken several of my clients from a state of frustration and feeling "stuck", to crystal clarity as to what they should do. But this only works for those who are willing look deep inside themselves and are committed to finding true happiness. So with that said, let me tell you Does any of this sound familiar? - You continue to be fixated on people who hurt you and who are no longer in your life. - You crave contact with someone who has hurt you and who you know will cause you more pain. - You continue to revolve around people who you know are taking advantage of you or exploiting you. - You are committed to remaining loyal to someone who has betrayed you, even though their actions indicate few signs of change. - You are desperate to be understood, validated, or needed by those who have indicated they do not care about you. - You go to great lengths to continue to help, caretake, or consider people who have been destructive to you. What You Need Now: -Someone who has the knowledge, training, education and experience working on himself and others to lead you through the emotional sh*tstorm that breaking with a narcissist can create. Here's a little sneak preview of what you'll get: - 4 Ways to know if you have been trauma bonded - 10 Healing questions to ask yourself - The most dangerous effect of trauma bonding on your brain and how to fix it - The first step you need to know before starting your healing journey - The brutal truth you don't want to hear to break the trauma bond - How to understand if you are in love or you are in trauma - How to start feeling safe with yourself - How to resolve Heartache and Obsession and move on - How to overcome negative emotions ( Anger, hate, fear, anxiety .. ) The list goes on