Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationship

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

You may think diving into 'doing more' and being a 'good provider' will save you both.

It doesn't.

Key points covered include:

1. Emotional Disconnect: Highly motivated individuals often focus so much on work that they neglect the emotional connection with their partner, creating a functional but distant relationship. The speaker highlights that this emotional gap can lead to serious issues, citing research from the Gottman Institute, which shows 80% of couples who experience disconnection for over a year end in divorce.
2. Avoidance of Conflict: Many high achievers use work as a way to avoid confronting difficult situations at home. Instead of resolving conflicts, they retreat into their jobs, believing that by working hard, they are indirectly supporting their partner. However, this avoidance worsens the relationship in the long term.
3. False Sense of Stability: Success at work can create a temporary high and a sense of stability. However, this is misleading because the excitement from work isn't genuine emotional connection. Over time, the emotional distance grows, and partners may find themselves feeling like strangers to one another.
4. Long-term Consequences: Emotional distance is a major factor in the breakdown of relationships, and the speaker warns that focusing too much on the functionality of the relationship (e.g., roles like earning money or managing household tasks) without true emotional intimacy can have dire long-term effects.

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Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

10 signs you are self-sabotaging

1. The fear of being vulnerable
2. The constant need for validation
3. Testing your partner for their loyalty / affection
4. Overcompensating and people pleasing
5. Fear of being alone (different to loneliness)
6. Projecting the past into the present relationship
7. Unrealistic expectations (entitlement: hello ego, grandiosity, and narcissism)
8. Inconsistent or avoidant communication
9. Over analysing and excessive worry (ruminating in circles)
10. Lacking boundaries (this is not just an outside thing, but really an internal boundary system)

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

Have you ever questioned whether it's you who is toxic or if it's your partner?

Here are 4 simple and powerful steps to take to assess where the toxic cycles are coming from and how to end these.

1.  Ask yourself, what tendencies do you have when it comes to people or when you're around people? Are you someone who people pleases, becomes anxious about how other's view you, be the first to criticise yourself, or do you distance yourself from others?

2. How does my tendency negatively impact my happiness? For example, does my people pleasing tendency mean that although I want to make others happy, it leaves me feeling deflated, unhappy and resentful because I'm always at the bottom of the pile?

3. How does this appear in my relationship? For example, if I'm people pleasing, I always prioritise my partner and I don't say what I'm really thinking, I go along with their plans or desires, I keep quiet when they've upset me, or I have loud outbursts and we get into arguments when it's too far gone?

4. What is the next simplest and most intelligent step for me to take that would be helpful for myself, my partner, and the relationship? Would it be to notice each time I have the urge to be quiet, and instead learn communication skills so I can say something? Would it be to stop criticising myself, and recognise that I do have value, so that it is easier to hold my boundary?




Start empowering yourself.

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

This is ESSENTIAL for you to pay attention to - like you bathe, brush your teeth, drink water, and eat every day; you better look at your relationship with the same lens.

1. Absence of communication. This is not just simply saying "don't be defensive and don't criticise". This is about disconnecting, the inability to empathise, pulling apart, and keeping conversations on surface level.

2. Emotional disconnection. Scientific research shows that 80% of couples who are emotionally disconnected end in divorce.

3. Frequent arguments. This can go from disagreements to being unappreciated - but either way you are disconnected from what is truly meaningful at your core values. 

4. Lack of intimacy. This is not just about having sex but it's about being emotionally vulnerable and willing to expose oneself to be held by the other (and vice versa).

5. Loss of trust. This can be built up but you are definitely going to need to start from ground zero, with the ingredients of safety, honesty, and transparency to create trust again.

6. Different life goals. You are not going to be the same as your partner (and you shouldn't be) but you need to be able to grow together. This is foundational for your relationship to flourish.

7. Indifference. This is simply when you've stopped investing as much as you would have previously, or as much as you would like to invest in a relationship.

8. Avoidance. Time together feels like a chore and you even invite others around as a reason to 'be together'.

9. Constant criticism. This can have a huge negative impact on your self-esteem and self-worth.

10. Inability to move forward together. Being stuck and stagnating - if you're stuck you're actually deteriorating (not staying the same).

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Sex can either be healing or cause further trauma in a relationship. 

Sex isn't just a physical act, but it's the spiritual, mental and emotional connection that's involved within a relationship. But that can be absolutely destroyed when it comes to a relationship with someone with narcissistic tendencies.

No shame - only openness and compassion here. Let's delve into the 10 top problems experienced in sex with a narcissist.

1. Sex entitlement - This brings the issue of 'consensual' vs 'wanted' sex - and you get pushed into saying yes to at least avoid other problems like criticism, rejection or infidelity.

2. Hypersensitivity to criticism - rejecting any form of feedback, and it can be a slippery slope into being gaslit.

3. Lack of empathy and forming emotional connection during an act so vulnerable.

4. Expectation of extreme praise and admiration (again, potential to gaslight)

5. Withholding sex as a form of punishment, rejection and shaming.

6. Sexual exploitation as a tool for manipulation and 'transaction'.

7. Sexual aggression - its a 'consentual' form of punishment which enforces the power imbalance.

8. Infidelity and social humiliation

9. Openly speaking about the bedroom with others to compare and contrast sexual experiences - forcing you to 'perform more and better' (sex becomes a performance, not an act of intimacy).

10. Gaslighting and sexual creation, creating a whole heap of shame if you're not playing ball.

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

We often link success at work or financial stability with getting more love, admiration, and security from our partners. But here's the kicker: despite all our hard work, many of us see our relationships suffer.

We get so caught up in chasing career milestones or money targets that we forget about tending to our relationships. It's like we're on autopilot, focusing solely on work and neglecting our connection with our partners. Sure, we might hit those career or financial targets eventually, but it often comes at the expense of losing touch with ourselves and our relationships.

Even though we start off with good intentions, aiming to work hard for the sake of our relationships, we end up feeling distant from our partners. We've let the emotional and mental bonds slip away while we were busy climbing the ladder. It's crucial to strike a balance between our professional ambitions and prioritizing our relationships to avoid the sad reality of achieving success while losing what truly matters in life.

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

This is all an inside job.

The thing to hold in mind is that a boundary requires YOU to uphold and execute the consequences to, but does not mean that the other person has to adhere to them.

With a narcissist, having a boundary can feel like an impossible task because any boundary you express is also you admitting you are worthy of having your needs met, disrupting their pre-exiting concept of relational dynamics involving a heirarchy.

Your boundaries might be rejectected in the form of gaslighting or blackmail.

And so you do not negotiate the boundary.

You need to remain secure and self-assured in your own needs, prioritise these, and recognise that the rejection is a lesson you are learning about them.

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

Today we have a deep and introspective conversation with Dr. Kate Truitt, a clinical psychologist and applied neuroscientist. 

We delve into:
- Complexities of intimate relationships and how these are impacted by early and past experiences.
- Cultural and societal shifts in how we view relationships, what's acceptable, masculinity, and "situationships"
- Any relationship fundamentally requires psychological safety and mutual care.
- Book smarts and knowing the technical knowledge on watching out for trauma, narcissism, trauma bonding, self-critical voices, and shame do not protect you against the practical experiences of these.
- Chaos in relationships can feel comfortable.
- Amy the amygdala is simply trying to protect you - but sometimes in ways that hinder you.
- Self-compassion is key, always.

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

Trauma bonds in men, Part 2

In this episode, I want to delve deeper into the topic of men and the core issue of shame, which is particularly high in those who have experienced trauma or abuse. Men often struggle to express these experiences, especially in heterosexual relationships, due to societal expectations and the belief that their value is based on what they provide.

Shame is a pervasive emotion that can be extremely challenging to navigate because it makes individuals feel fundamentally flawed. This emotion often leads to depression, anxiety, and guilt, creating a vortex of painful feelings. Men face difficulty in dealing with shame because they're unsure of how to navigate it and are bombarded with mixed messages from society.

Society has evolved to focus on equality in relationships, challenging traditional gender roles. Men are often valued based on their roles, what they provide, and their characteristics. While it's important to strive to be the best version of oneself, this emphasis on external factors coupled with shame makes it hard for men to stand up against mistreatment.

Childhood experiences further reinforce this shame, as boys are often punished for pushing boundaries. They learn that expressing themselves may lead to more punishment, so they hide their true selves and conform to others' expectations.

Shame responses can manifest as withdrawal, self-attack, avoidance, or attacking others. Men who have carried shame for extended periods may resort to attacking behaviors to cope with their own feelings of worthlessness.

To address these issues, it's crucial to distinguish between what belongs to you and what belongs to the other person in the relationship. You can't change someone else, but you can work on your own self-worth and boundaries. Taking calculated risks by opening the door to your emotions and experiences can help gauge whether the relationship is worth pursuing.

Ultimately, understanding the complexity of shame and its impact on men is essential for both personal growth and building healthier relationships.

If you want to get in touch you can fin

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.

Welcome to Dr Sarah: Relationship Success Lab, where high achievers, executives, and entrepreneurs explore relationship fitness, healing from relationship trauma, and creating secure, trusting, and loving partnerships. Designed for those navigating high-stakes careers and relationships, we dive into trauma-informed coaching, relationship wellbeing, and practical strategies to recover from trauma bonding and build meaningful connections. Save your marriage, start building secure relationships and optimizing your relationship wellbeing.

You will be torn - a part of you will have the ultimate desire for saving the relationship, everything you have invested into it, while the other part of you will want to end it and gain relief.

Support the show

Welcome to Trauma Bonding to Secure Relationships with Dr Sarah — the podcast that helps ambitious individuals and couples heal trauma bonding and toxic relationship cycles to build secure attachments and loving healthy relationships.

Hosted by Dr Sarah, psychologist, relationship strategist, and founder of Heal Trauma Bonding and Relationship Success Lab, this show guides you through practical tools and deep insights on:

✅ Healing from trauma bonding, anxious attachment style, and codependency
✅ Building emotional resilience and secure attachment styles a
✅ Improving communication, empathy, and emotional intimacy
✅ Reclaiming your identity, boundaries, and self-worth
✅ Creating lasting relationship happiness and passion

Whether you're recovering from betrayal, navigating codependency, or simply ready to break free from the past, this podcast gives you the clarity, strength, and strategy to move forward

We hope you got massive value from this episode for your own healing and relationship progress.