Soma Rising

Soulmate Or Trauma Bond

• Tabitha MacDonald • Episode 79

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The world stops, your body lights up, and something in you whispers destiny. We’ve all felt that electric pull, but what if that rush isn’t a soulmate calling you home—it’s a trauma bond beginning to form? We unpack the chemistry behind intense attraction, the psychology of intermittent reinforcement, and the subtle shifts from love bombing to confusion that train your brain to chase relief rather than love.

I share the bar-night “movie scene” that hooked me, the red flags I edited out, and the brutal truth about why smart, intuitive people stay. We break down how gaslighting plants self-doubt, why empaths and healers are especially at risk, and how consistency can feel “boring” when chaos once passed for care. You’ll learn to spot the cycle—floods of attention, strategic withdrawal, crumbs of warmth—and why the high of reconciliation feels so convincing after pain.

This is Soma Rising: Conversations for a Conscious Future —where health, wealth, love, and purpose flow together on the Golden Path of alignment.  Learn more at somatribe.org

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Tabitha MacDonald is an Intuitive Coach and Bodyworker committed to helping people overcome pain fast so they can experience the love, success, freedom, and fulfillment they deserve.

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Destiny Or Trauma Bond

SPEAKER_01

Today, we are going to talk about something that breaks a lot of hearts and confuses a lot of intuitive people. We're talking about the question: was it a trauma bond or was it a soulmate? Because if you have ever been in a relationship with a narcissist or a high control personality or someone who's aloof, you know the moment I'm about to describe to you. That moment where you meet them and the world stops. And you think, Oh my god, I've known you forever. You feel this electric pull in your body. Your intuition, or what you think it is, lights up. Your heart opens, and you say to yourself, This must be destiny. But today we're gonna unpack something very important because sometimes what feels like destiny is actually a trauma bond forming. I remember the exact moment I met my ex-husband. It was February 25th, 1999, somewhere in the evening at the zebra club in Sacramento. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting at the bar with my sister drinking dollar beers because, well, it was dollar beer night on a Thursday, and who doesn't in their 20s like to go to dollar beer night? And uh she had had a really bad day at work, and we were sitting at the bar, and this really old guy came up to us and he started hitting on us, and we were not in the mood. And my uh like a few minutes later, this this guy walks up to us, and he pretended like we were his wives, and we were really grateful, and it was funny. Uh, you know, I don't know. In your 20s, things are just funnier. Uh, I think. At least when I was growing up, we we were more I don't know, I guess things felt lighter in the 90s. Um, so there we are, and he starts talking to us, and he starts talking to my sister, and I turn around, and like the air stopped. I remember it like stopping, like the world stopped, and I saw only him. He was walking through the front door, and I remember him shaking his hair, and he had long, like dark brown hair, and it was a little bit curly, and he shook his head back and forth, and I just felt my body change. Like energetically, I knew he was probably gonna be my husband one day. He had on a leather jacket, it was like it was like from a movie, you know, those like slow motion scenes where the world stops and um it's just two people and everything around them fades, and and that's literally what it felt like. And you could smoke in bars back then, and I remember seeing the sm the smoke swirling around him. And um, there was just this coolness about him that I was super attracted to. I really liked the kind of bad boy look, and um he definitely fit the bill at the time. Um, and our eyes locked, like our eyes locked, and he walked up to me almost like there were forces beyond us pulling one another together. I think within an hour I was sitting on his lap and he was reading me poetry, and I don't think we separated for the next three years. And, you know, when we finally did split and took a break, it was, you know, a couple years later where I started having dreams about him again. And I was living in England going through a stressful period, and I opened up my email inbox, and his best friend at the time had been writing me for months saying that he'd been trying to find me again. And I I felt that same feeling like destiny was was pulling me towards like my life's real purpose and meaning. And the familiarity of that feeling, I mistook as a soul soulmate, like divine soul union, like there's different kinds of soulmates, and I didn't know any of this at the time, I was not very spiritual, I did not understand the universe, and I certainly did not understand trauma bonds. Because if I had understood attachment theory or trauma bonds at the time, this would not be this romantic story where I actually left out all the bad details. Um, it would have it would have included maybe all of the details. Um, because to be honest, the reason we broke up the first time was because he was losing his battle with alcoholism and his personality was shifting and he was becoming very angry. But because I am a social seven on the Enneogram, I rewrote all of the red flag straight out of our love story. And if you have ever done that, I now know a lot of intuitives do that as well. Um, so this question is really one that I get a lot when I'm working with clients. And it's like, why don't people leave when they know someone is hurting them? And this is men and women. This is not just women who experience aloofness, detachment, trauma bonding. Men experience it as well. So, you know, the other question is like, why do you think about this person nostalgically rumination, um, even though they kind of destroyed your heart? And I have a couple of exes like this, where there's this like shadowy rumination pattern that just I can't get them out of my head. I now have processes. You can download the free trauma bond removal process. It's uh links in the show notes, and you can take advantage of that and stop ruminating on your ex today because it does work. I created it because I needed it. And so what I want to say is that you're not broken. There's nothing wrong with you, that this is actually this psychological phenomenon called trauma bonding. And trauma bonding is not love, even though it feels more intense than love. I will tell you that again and again and again because it is a chemical addiction in your brain and your body. It is not weakness, it is not a lack of will or intelligence, it is a neurobiological mechanism that develops under specific conditions of intermittent abuse, transforming the toxic relationship into a form of addiction that is extraordinarily difficult to break free from. Understanding the mechanism is absolutely crucial, not only to effectively support yourself, or maybe you know someone else who's really having a hard time getting over someone, or maybe they're still in a relationship they just can't seem to break the pattern with. Um, but also because most of us who endured that kind of relationship think if I had loved them more, then it would have been different. Because a part of you believed that it was your fault most of the time because you're the one taking responsibility for the relationship all by your lonesome. So in order to begin healing, we really need to understand the difference between a soulmate and a trauma bond. Because uh, and I did this myself, I did not want to leave a soulmate. Like I thought, you know, I had that mentality, no man left behind. Like if my soul picked this person, I can't simply just walk away from them. That's abandoning their soul, right? So if you can relate, let me know. Because that I think is really common for intuitive people, not because we're naive, but because trauma bonds feel spiritual, they feel cosmic, they feel like fate because they activate the exact same systems in your brain and your nervous system that deep love and attachment activate. The difference they are built, trauma bonds are built on intermittent reinforcement, which means sometimes you receive love and sometimes you receive pain. And your brain becomes addicted to this cycle. I want you to think about this for a second. I've never done heroin, but I hear it's incredibly addictive. I have smoked cigarettes, so I know the addictive quality of nicotine. And almost everyone has some form of addiction that they struggle with. Scrolling on social media is literally designed to keep you addicted, um, using the same neural pathways as trauma bonding. It's the same science. Um, so there might be something that you either have, and if you don't like the word addiction, we can just call overuse. Um, so you know, if it's gaming, if it's exercise, anything that that has this almost like compulsive behavior attached to it. Um think of something that maybe you might have an addiction to. Maybe it's chocolate, who knows? So um, when you love this thing, you love this thing. And then, you know, for instance, I loved cigarettes when I was younger. Oh my god, I loved them. I would write love poems to them. I loved them so much. And the the pain of smoking was significant, right? Like you can't breathe, your skin wrinkles, your fingers are gross, like it you stink, like oh, it's disgusting. It turns your teeth gross. But I loved smoking. Like, loved it. I thought I loved it. What I loved was the relief from the pain of withdrawal from nicotine. Not the same thing. I I'm gonna say that again. I loved the relief from the pain of withdrawal from nicotine. When a drug leaves your body, it's painful. Because it is making the feeling the temporary high, whatever it gave you in the beginning, as it's leaving, it feels like you're dying. This is why some people have to go to treatment centers when they have severe addiction issues, because they they can't quit because it literally feels like you are dying. And the crap part about it is that your brain believes the only solution to making the pain go away is to get more of that drug instead of just going through the pain of the withdrawal and getting to the other side of it. This is the same mechanism that people who struggle with control issues or you know, narcissistic tendencies, you know, they don't always have to be narcissists. They could be people who have a disorganized attachment style, they could be people who have an aloof attachment style or avoidant. Um, it could be, you know, someone who struggles with addiction issues, abandonment issues, or um, rejection issues. They might have so much fear of being abandoned that they need to get you hooked and addicted to them. So they do the love bomb, pull away, love bomb, pull away. That creates a trauma bond. You are now addicted to the very thing that is creating the pain for you in the first place, and your mind has decided that they are the only way out of the pain. And that means settling for breadcrumbs of attention for scraps instead of for a full healthy experience of love. You might have experienced this not in just romantic relationships, but in friendships, in friend groups, in work relationships, in um a manager that you might be working for might use these same control tactics. Uh, it there's it's used in many, many places or religious organizations, some coaching groups. You know, like this is not a small pattern, it is a big one in our world right now. And I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast earlier today, and the guest he had on was talking about how right now on the planet, we are struggling with high, high levels of narcissism because of social media. And that was the message I kept receiving was that the escalation of social media use was basically feeding this disordered thinking that is narcissistic thinking. And it's taking perfectly natural human beings who are not narcissistic and making their thinking patterns more in alignment with narcissistic thinking strategies. I am not saying you are a narcissist, but I am saying that we have to constantly be questioning the way that our mind is working because it is literally being programmed right now to be thinking the same way that someone who actually has narcissistic personality disorder is thinking. And, you know, even if you might assume, you might think that maybe someone you work with might be using narcissistic control strategies with you, or, you know, maybe a family member. I this is really common with parents who have a lot of narcissistic tendencies. And, you know, I'm not saying that everyone's a narcissist, but I will say strategies for control or relational strategies is what I like to call them. Um, then you might all you know want to try the trauma bond meditation. It's not only about romantic love, it'll it'll help reverse any kind of trauma bond that you might be experiencing in your life right now. So let's talk about it a little bit more. In a healthy relationship, love is stable. Your partner is kind. Most of the time, you have regular, you know, disputes. You work through them through healthy communication, you learn how to regulate your own emotional states so that you're not basically putting your baggage on the other person. And you you know they're there. Like there's no, well, they won't, they will, they won't, they will, they won't, they will, they won't, they. The roller coaster isn't there. And that can feel boring to someone who grew up in a home where there was addiction issues or narcissistic abuse because love was wired into your body as chaotic. So if you meet someone who's like stable and available, then they might feel like an absolute threat to you and you'll find them boring. This is like that that saying, Mr. Nice Guy never comes in last. And it has a lot to do with addiction to the chaos structures of our childhood, which is why when you meet someone who activates your attachment wounds, you're literally like on fire for them. You become obsessed with them because the neural pathways were laid long before your first encounter with this human being. And it can feel like a soulmate because the neural pathways were laid when you were young before you remember. And even if you if you came from a healthy home with loving parents and you did not have this, I've talked to a lot of people who are like, yeah, but I didn't come from a family that was chaos. We had secure, stable love. And in in that time, you're probably the perfect prey because you just didn't know they existed. You probably made assumptions that that they were like you, and and you didn't have any frame of reference to look for it. So, you know, it's not just people who grew up in chaos, it's also people who grew up without any exposure and they were just ill-prepared to meet one in the wild, right? So they were kind of like, we'll just call it not naive, but like naivete about um how far some people will go to control another human being. So in this relationship dynamic where there's a trauma bond, love is very unpredictable. One day they adore you, the next day they criticize you. And it doesn't always have to be a flat-out criticiz, like critical statement. A lot of the time it's very passive-aggressive. They ask questions that slowly make you doubt yourself. And they might ghost you and then say, Oh, it's not my fault, you didn't text me. And you can be looking right at your phone and saying, Yes, I did, and they'll say, Well, your phone must be broken because I didn't get it. And pretty soon you start planting the seed of doubt, and you stop trusting yourself, and that sucks. I'm gonna say that that sucks. But because intuitive types and empaths, healers, we always see the path of highest potential in any given situation. So we connect in with their soul, like who they are, because narcissistic abuse, like control strategies, aloof, that's an ego wound. That is, that is not the soul, right? So we see their soul, we see their potential, we fall in love with that timeline. And it makes it difficult to reconcile who they are being right now with who they are on a spiritual level. And I found that this was probably the hardest part for me because I didn't know I was an intuitive, I didn't know I was a medium, I didn't know I had spiritual gifts. And because, you know, we don't really talk about it in our world very like maybe now we do more, but we definitely didn't when I was growing up. And, you know, we have this ability to see people in their their their light. And unfortunately, if you were trained to dismiss looking at red flags, because if you grew up in a home where there was narcissistic abuse, where there was addiction, you were probably trained from an early age to turn green flags into red flags and red flags into green flags in order to make sense of things in your family. You know, growing up with a very active alcoholic in the home, uh, we were not able to see red flags. It was like, oh, this is fun. Like, is he gonna come home nice or mean? Like, who's coming home tonight, Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? And um, it was always a state of, you know, I have to make this bad behavior loving so that I can survive this. And that's a decision a child makes. And so when we're a grown-up and we're going to have love, that inner child comes up because it's love is attached to play. And our inner child loves to play. And so if we're out and we're playing and we're having fun and we're light-hearted, um, their attachment wound is gonna come up with it. So we really need to heal that wound because we don't want to walk around letting our inner child make grown-up decisions for us in love and relationships. Because to be honest, you deserve more than that. You just do. And, you know, I I recently had an experience where, you know, I was just talking to somebody for like two months, and when we met, it was it was not a good fit. And I think it was it was interesting because I I had I was probably the most detached I'd been from an outcome in a very long time. Um, which meant to me that a lot of my attachment wounds were very healed uh because I'm never that detached from an outcome. And I thought, okay, this is a really interesting and good feeling because I'm not trauma bonding. I'm not responding to certain behaviors that I used to respond to. And that he wasn't a bad guy, it just definitely wasn't a good fit. And um, who they were when they showed up wasn't who I thought they would be. And so, you know, it was more of like uh, oh, okay, cool. This is a lot of learning and a lot of lessons, and I'm okay with it. And, you know, I I cleared the energy and I listened to my trauma bond loop for like seven nights to make sure I cleared anything unconsciously that might be coming up. And it was, it was creating back pain for me. Um, and that's a whole nother conversation. But let's go back to the trauma bond. So the it's the same mechanism, it's an addiction over production to dopamine, and the unpredictability creates something extremely powerful in. Our brain. Now, I will say, based on your personal life experiences, how this shows up for you is going to be different. That's why it's so hard to spot. Because we're all wired slightly different. There's certain things that are very standard, but based on your life experiences and how you processed them and how you registered them, how you behave is going to help you see, am I experiencing another trauma bond right now? Um, but like it's also the same mechanism that makes people addicted to gambling. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Because you don't know when the reward will come. You just keep playing, and your brain literally becomes addicted to the chase and then the withdrawal, and then the chase, and the withdrawal. Almost every trauma bond starts the same way with love bombing. This is when the person floods you with attention, compliments, maybe affection, future promises. They look at you like you're the most extraordinary person they've ever met. They text you all the time. They want to know everything about you, your dreams, your wounds, your childhood, your fears, and you open up to them because you're like, maybe this is the one. And it might be at work where they're like, oh, this person really wants to help me succeed. Maybe it's in a friend group and you just met your new BFF, and they're like, Oh, this is like your ride or die, your thumb and Louise. Like it feels safe. It feels magical because it's like they can see parts of you that you didn't even know existed. And it feels you feel seen. And I think that it makes you feel safe. Like, oh, if this person can see me, I'm safe. Like this person is, you know, someone I can rely on. And it really what you don't realize is that during this phase, the person is also collecting information. They are collecting a map of your vulnerabilities. Everything that you reveal can later be used to manipulate you. They're tracking everything about you. Almost like a hunter tracking its prey. Not everyone is aware that they're doing this when they're doing it. I'm not saying all people who do this are bad, but I am saying that they are literally collecting your vulnerabilities to use as a weapon against you. And after the love bombing ends and things begin to change, and it's usually slowly and very subtly, they start becoming distant. You might get more criticism, um, less predictability, more unpredictable behavior. And one day they're loving, the next day they're cold, and suddenly you're confused and you're thinking, where did the person and I fall in love with go? And so you try harder, you love harder, you do more, you try to earn back that early magic. Maybe you're like, screw it all, become the aloof one. Um, and then you quickly realize that they're way better at that game than you are. And when they suddenly become kind again, you feel this relief, like someone has just removed tight jeans after Thanksgiving dinner. You know, that feeling of taking something off that was hurting you. Your brain floods with dopamine, and you tell yourself, see, they're still in there. They're the person I fell in love with. It must have been me, and maybe I was emotional, maybe I was making things up like they said. And the truth is they were always both people. They are all of them, just like you are all of you. You can't separate them out. They are both the aloof one who withdraws and withholds love and affection, and they are also the present one who you share your vulnerabilities with. That's the hardest part. Because they're both. And I think the reason you know, I really just want to talk to my intuitive healers out there and the people who are empathic, because I think that you get into the most intense narcissistic relationships. And it's partly because you like I said before, you see potential in others. You can see their wound, right? You know where the wound came from. And you excuse the bad behavior with the wound, and you see their inner child screaming for love and affection, and you see the good in them, and that's why they're attracted to you. Because you can see the best parts of them, which is feeding their narcissistic behavior.

SPEAKER_00

By the way.

Spotting The Gaslight And Doubt

Healthy Love Versus Chaos

Gambling Brain And Addictive Love

Beyond Romance: Work And Community

Missing The High, Forgetting The Hurt

SPEAKER_01

Narcissists and people with control strategies are very good at revealing just enough vulnerability to hook your empathy. They may see say things like, I've never been loved the right way, you're the only person who understands me, everyone else abandons me. And if you're a healer, that lights up every part of you, and you think I can help them heal, but what actually happens is something very different. Your empathy becomes the very glue of the trauma bond. Eventually, the relationship falls into this cycle: criticism, withdrawal, conflict, and then reconciliations, apologies, or in my case, we never even got to the apology phase, affection, passionate reunions. And each time the good moments return, the they feel more intense because your nervous system has just been through pain. Your brain starts to believe something dangerous. The pain is the price you pay for love. That love is pain and pain is love. Can you relate? And now the trauma bond is fully forming. So if you think you might be in a trauma bond, it's good to know what it is because I didn't know what it was. I thought this was just love, because this is all I ever knew. I didn't know what a trauma bond was. Um, so if you've ever experienced this, you may recognize some of these signs. You defend the person even when they hurt you. So let's say you're all sitting at coffee and you're complaining about a fight you had with your girlfriends, and you one of them kind of calls you out on it, then you'll defend them. Um, or something inside of you will shut down, maybe you'll be quiet, and you'll hear a quiet voice in your head say, Oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about. We have a great relationship. Have you seen hers? Beware of that voice. You believe they will eventually change. You are rooted in the belief that change is possible for everybody. You minimize the severity of the abuse because the worst abuse has no bruises. Emotional abuse, neglect, that leaves scars that wound us in every area of our life, mainly in success, in romance, in what we think is possible. And slowly over time, you lose connection with your higher self because they're just their voice is lost to the whispers of doubt. You feel grateful for basic kindness. You can't imagine life without them. In fact, when I left the most intense narcissistic relationship I was in, I felt like I was gonna die. I remember going to the doctor and saying, I don't think I'm gonna survive this. I need medication. And I am embarrassed a lot of the time to even admit that because the pain, the emotional pain of it, was so bad that I felt like I might actually take my own life. Now, I love my children more than my pain, so I worked through it, I got the help I needed, but it it almost destroyed me. That's how thick our trauma bond was. And if you've ever caught yourself trying to leave and you keep coming back, it's not because you're weak. And it's definitely not because you're stupid, it's because your nervous system has been conditioned, that they are the only solution to the pain you are in. This is where it gets really confusing for people on a spiritual path because trauma bonds often feel like karmic relationships. They feel like you have known this person across lifetimes. And in some ways, that feeling is completely wrong. Sometimes these relationships are soul contracts, but not for the reason we think. They're not here to be your forever love, they are here to wake you up, to teach you boundaries, self-worth, discernment, to help you reclaim your power. These relationships are often what we call uh ignited by trickster entities or trickster angels. They break your heart. These are agents of chaos. And they also break the illusion that love must be earned through suffering. So when we're looking at breaking the trauma bond, you have to understand the the spiritual side of it and also the the science side of it. Like healing from heartbreak is is science and intuition. They can't be separate because you can't just heal it on the spiritual plane, you also have to heal it in your physical body. I kept seeing people come into the massage clinic with these patterns of pain that were just linked to narcissistic abuse or a parent who struggled with addiction, a sibling who struggled with addiction from bullying, like their nervous systems were wired different. And that's what got me started on the path of understanding the long-term effects of mental, emotional, um, and spiritual abuse. So when we're looking at breaking the trauma bond, it functions like an addiction. You have to separate from the person. Your brain experiences something similar to withdrawal, massive anxiety, obsessive thinking, nostalgia, intense longing. And many people return to the relationship just to make the pain go away. I I took the worst narcissist back in 2019 because I thought I would die without them. And I actually there was a moment when I was like, did God put me in timeout with COVID? Because I took them back and they were like, God was like, hey, let's put you in the house together for a couple of months with no other outside influence. See how that works out for you. Uh, because that did break it. I will say that. So like, um, I'm pretty sure it's not my fault COVID happened, but there was a night when I did actually think that. Um, but that longing, that longing feels like it will kill you. And that's why people go back and they go back and they go back, or they keep dating the same person in a different body because they're like, I need the pain to stop. And that chaos is going to make the pain stop. And we need to begin to heal this wound as a collective. It is destroying families, it is destructive. I've seen people experiencing narcissistic abuse outside of the home and work, and the abuse from outside of the home was impacting the home. So we have to understand where it's coming from because we always think that it's in love and relationships. It can come from anything. It could be a colleague, a boss, a sibling. I see this a lot in sibling relationships where you're in this drama triangle with a sibling and they're the abuser, and you can't see it because you just want them to love you. And it can be extremely destructive to families. And, you know, the narcissist doesn't have to be in your family unit. It could be someone in a religious organization. I've seen that happen, especially in cliques. Uh, I experienced this in mom's groups, uh, where we had this tangled kind of chaotic web, and it was awful. And I've talked to a lot of other people who've also experienced it, not inside of the the marriage or the love relationship, but it was coming from outside and affecting the home the same way. And that's the sad part, is it's like, especially if you're not because most people I think are thinking of it in terms of, well, my husband or wife isn't a narcissist, we have a great family, but why is all this stuff happening that feels like what you're talking about? Because it could be coming from outside, it's not always inside the family. Um, and you know, it's also that like you you might miss the person, right? So if you miss the person, let's say there was a friend group that I had where we had a strong kind of control problems within the friend group. And when I moved, I missed them. I also felt relieved. Um and I missed I missed them to the point where I really couldn't find another friend group again because I was so afraid of getting in that environment again with um with with female friends, and that's not all females, but this particular female group was like that. And um, you know, it really had an impact on my ability to trust people later and to be able to build strong female relationships that were consistent and supportive and loving, and I have them now. It's smaller, and I don't belong to a group. I have separate friendships that are outside of each other. Um, so you also miss the version of this person that existed during the love bombing phase. And the problem is that they've done such a good job rewriting your brain that you don't remember all the bad stuff. All you remember is the good stuff. The heroin addict doesn't remember the withdrawal, the poverty, the the stuff that happens. They remember the high. They don't think about the bad stuff. I read this meme that said, um, if um if a crackhead can make it happen today to get their crack, I'm sure you can get your billing done or something. It was hilarious. And I was like, truth, truth with that. But that's how powerful an addiction is, right? So the love bombing is the version that you fell in love with. And I'm gonna just say, not only was it them that you fell in love with, it was the version of you they brought out. Because chances are they brought out your hidden desires, this hidden version of you that you hadn't tapped into before, because they can see your hidden desires, the ones you fail to recognize that you have. For a lot of single moms, we have this desire to have support. And I think that is what makes us the most vulnerable population. Because a narcissist will come in and offer some help. They'll take the trash out or like, you know, validate that, yeah, that that's hard or that's hard or do the dishes. I mean, something small, right? Like it doesn't even take a lot for a single mom. And we're like, oh my God, they know what I need. And it makes us vulnerable to narcissistic abuse because they don't have to work very hard to get us to fall in love with them when you know we barely have time to take a shower. We're probably in more pain than we like to admit, and the dating scene sucks after divorce, it just sucks. So it's it we become a that's why if you're a single mom, I'm really gonna invite you to take a look at this because it makes us so vulnerable to narcissistic abuse. And I I just have this love for single moms because I I was one, and I I went through some of the worst heartbreak as a single mom, not only from my divorce, but the relationships that followed. And it, you know, unfortunately taught, you know, my daughter the same patterns, and that sucks because we have to talk about that all the time. And I'm always like, oh baby girl, you got that from me. I'm so sorry. Um, but like let's let me help you break that. So um, what a real soul connection might feel like if you encounter it, it can feel very different. It does not create a lot of anxiety. Um, if you've done your work, I will say if you have an anxious attachment style as your predominant attachment style. Anytime your love, your desire to have love is activated, you're probably gonna get some anxiety. Do the trauma bond meditation, it'll help clear some of that for you. Um, I also have a parse integration and soma tribe. I'll put a link below if you want to try it out. It's like a dollar trial membership. And there's a whole love and romance section in there that clears all of this stuff for you. I mean, it's a dollar. You should give it a try if you're really struggling with this stuff. Um, so a real stable, secure love does not make you question your worth, and it does not require you to abandon yourself. True, soul-aligned love feels like peace, feels like safety, consistency, mutual growth, and support. You can relax around them and you don't feel like you're chasing them anymore. You just feel like you're standing in it, like supported, like um, think about like a big tree with deep roots. The wind can blow you a little bit, but you're firmly rooted in truth. So if you've ever been in a trauma bond, I want you to hear this. You were not foolish, you were not weak, but your brain was responding to a very powerful biological and psychological mechanism. And the fact that you are learning about it means that you are already starting to break free. And awareness is the first step toward freedom. If you didn't even know that this existed or that you were in it, you wouldn't even seek freedom from it. You would simply be caught in the prison cell of the trauma bond. And I really it was the quote by Rumi that really started to open my eyes and wake me up. And it was, why would you stay in prison when the door is wide open? And it was, you know, during this toxic relationship, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Like every time I took this person back, I started gaining weight. And now my pattern, my body, if I'm in a relationship that's toxic, my body does not matter what I'm eating. It will start putting on weight as a protection. And that is how I know when I need to leave someone. One, like my leg would go out before now, my body just starts compounding fat. It's like, no. So I will protect you. And um, also I can tell that I start ruminating and fantasizing and not being willing to look at the dark side of the relationship, not being willing to take like um have a need or a uh not having any needs at all. And then slowly I just start losing my confidence. And I notice that my nervous system becomes exhausted, I'm tired, I kind of like lose the will to focus on the things that I used to love. And I'm so glad it's better now. Like it's so much better now. I can spot it so much faster than I used to. And sometimes I get mad because I'm like, oh man, how am I ever supposed to date again when my nervous system's literally wired for chaos? And I know that when I'm ready, the right person will come. Um, because energetically, intuitively, I can see them in my field. And um, I know, like I connect in with my higher self and I know they're coming, but not yet because we're just not ready. And that makes sense to me. And um I will say that you know, love, especially if you struggle in love and relationships, it requires science and spirit. Like they can't be separated because you have a human body, you're in a human experience. You cannot intuitive it alone. It does need both the science of how you're wired, attachment theory, you know, trauma understanding and trauma responses, uh, you know, codependency, you know, overcoming those strategies for connection and also this deep connection with your true higher self, like your true higher self, not your protector controller who's attracted to the bad boy, but like the true higher self. Uh, and that is what I teach in Soma Tribe. But for free, I'm gonna offer you the Heartbreak 911 meditation. So, part of the thing that you need to do is dissolve the cognitive dissonance, which is the version that you believed was them, and then how they were actually. Because there's like these two different people living in your mind. And let's all be real. We all want to fall in love with Mr. Potential, not you. know Mr. Trauma Bond. So we don't see Mr. Trauma Bond because we just want to see the potential. And that's what our brains are wired for. It's wired for pleasure, right? So what I'm going to invite you to do is there's a there's a link below. If you're in if you're interested, go download the the link and you can dissolve the trauma bond and you can also dissolve cognitive dissonance, which are these two different versions of them. And I promise you're going to feel better really soon. And you know there's a lot more about the energetics behind a trauma bond that we can talk about later. But I just want to say that it's a deep spiritual wound to have endured narcissistic abuse. It affects your soul you know it's it's not just a physical wound. It is a spiritual wound, which we'll talk about maybe on the next episode. And I really want you to have some compassion for yourself and understand that you're definitely not broken. You're just wired for it. So I hope this helps leave me a comment share it with someone who you think needs to hear this right now. And you know share the link if you know someone who's stuck who's stuck in a cycle of a trauma bond do it with love. Stop saying why are you going back to that guy again? Like you should dump them be like hey I this might help and just send them the link or the episode and you know let me know did it help? Does it free you? Do you feel better inside? And it it's it's this shared like vision of freeing people from narcissistic abuse that I have with my soul. And you know at first I was not on board. I'm going to say that I was like I don't want to go back to that world of you know narcissism. And it was because I still had a lot of of pain from being abused by narcissism. And I'm not a victim. I'm a very powerful person. But re I guess realizing it and coming out of it put me in a victim consciousness for a while. And I think I was afraid of losing myself to being a victim again. And I and I didn't want to do that because I worked really hard to get out of victim thinking because I was never there before until I realized I had endured all of this narcissistic abuse and it threw me into a victim mindset that was really hard to break out of. And so I think that's why I was really resisting teaching it again. I was afraid it would pull me back into that mindset and it has not. So woo yay and um I want that for you too I want you to be free because you deserve healthy secure love in all areas of your life you deserve success. You deserve to be free and to be fully aligned with your highest path of potential and to just break those chains from around your energetic ankles and your you know your system you you deserve better. And I hope you know that and if you don't yet know that you will one day know that. Much love to you. Take care

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Tabitha MacDonald

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