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- 00:02 So many phrases and words in psychology are misleading. No wonder layman and self-styled experts are confused beyond redemption. Take for example super ego which is just a part of the ego. It’s not separate and so on and so forth. One of the worst
- 00:20 offenders is trauma bonding. And the reason it’s an offender because it has nothing to do with trauma. It’s not the outcome of trauma and it does not lead to bonding. Let me repeat this. Trauma bonding has absolutely nothing nothing like zilch to do with trauma or with
- 00:42 bonding. It is not a trauma response and it does not lead to any kind of attachment or bonding. So what is trauma bonding? What is what we call trauma bonding? It’s an addiction. An addiction to intermittent reinforcement. That is the topic of today’s video. My
- 01:05 name is Sam Vaknin and I’m the author of Malignant Self- Love, Narcissism Revisited, and I’m also a professor of psychology with whom you’re probably trauma bonded by now or just traumatized. Okay, Shanim, let’s delve right in. I said that trauma
- 01:24 bonding has nothing to do with trauma and nothing to do with bonding. It is an addiction to intermittent reinforcement. If you want to put it in literary poetic terms, it’s an addiction to the abuser’s gaze. The gaze that makes you feel unique, special, perfect, lovable,
- 01:44 amazing, fascinating, incredible, irresistible, un unprecedented. It’s the gaze that idealizes you. And then this very gaze, this very abusers devalues you. And you crave the idealization. You crave being seen again as a perfect entity that can do no wrong and has all
- 02:12 the attributes of a divinity if nothing else. someone who is hyper intelligent, drop deadad gorgeous, genius, and so on. So, the abuser’s gaze holds the keys to your idealization, and the abuser can withhold this gift from you. Your exposure to your own
- 02:38 idealized version, your exposure to your perfection as seen through the abuser’s gaze is addictive. It’s intoxicating. You want more. You want more all the time. And the this gives the abuser power over you because he can withhold this. They can idealize you on Tuesday
- 02:59 and refuse to idealize you on Wednesday or even devalue you on Thursday. So he has the power, he has the monopoly, he has the sole exclusive access, he has the keys to the kingdom. You crave, you crave this idealization, this idealized version of you because you
- 03:23 feel as if you are being unconditionally accepted and loved the way a baby or an infant is. So it regresses you. It infantilizes you. You want more of it because it feels so good. And this addiction to the abuser’s gaze, this is what we call trauma bonding. It
- 03:47 actually doesn’t have anything to do with trauma. It has to do with withholding the withholding of the cornucupia the the the benefits of your idealized image your idealized self-concept how you are seen through the abuser’s gaze and you keep returning you want
- 04:10 more you keep returning for your for to your pusher because you want your fix it’s exactly an addiction we call it process addiction. Trauma bonding is not a state of mind. It’s a behavioral pattern. And in this sense, it’s a process addiction. A behavioral addiction.
- 04:33 We need to clarify a few um we need to clarify a few words that that I’ve used. I would like to clarify the words trauma, the word bonding, and the word intermittent reinforcement. I’m saying that one is addicted to intermittent reinforcement and therefore trauma
- 04:56 bonding is process addiction. And so perhaps the first thing I should do is I uh should define these words so that we um can at some point agree on common terminology. Let’s start with addiction. According to the American Psychological Association
- 05:17 dictionary of psychology, addiction is a state of psychological and or physical dependence on the use of drugs or other substances such as alcohol or on specific activities or behaviors. For example, returning to your abuser time and again. That’s a behavioral pattern
- 05:37 and you’re addicted to it. You can’t help it. It’s irresistible. It’s overpowering. The term says the dictionary is often used as an equivalent term for substance use disorder or substance dependence and can be applied to non-substance related behavioral addiction such as sex,
- 05:56 exercise and gambling. So addiction is the right way to regard trauma bonding because what do we have here? We have a selfharming behavior. Exactly like drinking, exactly like doing drugs, exactly like gambling. It’s a selfharming behavior. You can’t let go of the abuser. You’re
- 06:22 addicted to the abuser. You’re intoxicated by the abuser’s gaze. This creates a new dependency on the abuser. Only the abuser can idealize you and only the abuser can grant you access to this idealized image which makes you feel so good, so superior perhaps
- 06:40 because you’re a bit narcissistic, so safe, so loved, so accepted, so acknowledged and seen. Something that you’ve missed all your life is suddenly handed over to you on a silver platter. And the price you have to pay, the only cost is to suffer the
- 07:01 intermittent phases of abuse and demeaning and denigrating and degrading degrading you and so on. It’s a small price to pay. And so there’s an an addiction here. And the addiction has nothing to do with bonding. Here is how the dictionary defines bonding. The process in which
- 07:23 attachments or other close relationships are formed between individuals, especially between mother and infant. An early positive relationship between mother and a newborn child is considered by some theorists to be essential in establishing unconditional love on the
- 07:42 part of the parent as well as security and trust on the part of the child. In subsequent development, bonding establishes friendship and trust. As you can see, trauma bonding has nothing to do, not even a single element in common with bonding. It’s not bonding. You’re
- 08:00 not addicted to the abuser. You’re not addicted to the abuse. Obviously, you’re addicted to something that the abuser can give you and only the abuser can give you. You’re no more addicted to your pusher than you’re addicted to the abuser. You’re not addicted to the pusher.
- 08:19 You’re addicted to the drug. You’re not addicted to the abuser. You are addicted to the idealization. And you’re willing to suffer the devaluation phase in order to transition yet again to return to an idealization phase. What about the trauma element in trauma
- 08:40 bonding? Here is how trauma is defined in the dictionary. It’s an authoritative dictionary, the most authoritative dictionary. So, here’s how it’s defined. Trauma is any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion,
- 09:00 or other disruptive feelings intense enough to to have a longlasting negative effect on the person’s attitudes, behaviors, and other aspects of functioning. Traumatic events include those caused by human behavior, for example, rape, war, industrial
- 09:17 accidents, as well as by nature, for example, earthquakes. And they often challenge an individual’s view of the world as just, safe, and a predictable place. Again, you see that this has absolutely zero, nothing to do with trauma bonding. We have just established that traum
- 09:36 bonding, trauma bonding is not about bonding. It’s not about trauma. It’s an addiction. An addiction to grooming. An addiction to idealization. An an addiction to the falsity of your perfection. An addiction to the abusers’s gaze when he looks at you as
- 09:55 if you were some goddess or some divine figure. You addict, you become addicted to it. It’s intoxicating. It’s irresistible. You want more of it. Of course, you keep returning to the only source, to the monopoly, to the only one who can grant you access to these
- 10:10 emotions. And this is the abuser. The abuser therefore uses what is what we call intermittent reinforcement. And you are addicted to the intermittent reinforcement. What is reinforcement? Again the dictionary in operant conditioning reinforcement is a process
- 10:30 in which the frequency or probability of a response is increased by a dependent relationship or contingency with a stimulus or circumstance. the reinforcer. In other words, there’s something there’s a stimulus, information, behavior, something out there that creates in you the
- 10:55 tendency to increase or to decrease a specific type of behavior. And so the abuser’s ability to provide you access to your idealized self-concept, to your idealized image, to the idealized rendition of you. This uh exclusive ability of the abuser
- 11:20 causes you to increase the frequency and the probability of your response of your behavior which is to uh interact with the abuser to keep your relationship with the abuser to keep on keeping on. The abuser is like a pusher. What he has to give you is a drug.
- 11:45 In reinforcement according to the dictionary is the procedure that results in the frequency or probability of a response being increased in such a way. In classical conditioning the reinforcement is the presentation of an unconditioned stimulus after a
- 12:03 conditioned stimulus. Okay. What is intermittent reinforcement in operant or instrumental conditioning? any pattern of reinforcement in which only some responses are reinforced and the others are not. It is also called partial reinforcement or partial
- 12:23 schedule of reinforcement. What the abuser does, the abuser provide you with an idealized version of you. You fall in love with it. You get attached to your own ostensible perfection. You see yourself through the abuser’s gaze and you are queenlike. You’re amazing.
- 12:43 You’re godlike. You’re perfect. You want more of this. You feel loved. You feel accepted. You feel superior. You and and this is intoxicating. And you want more of this. So you alter, you change your behavior. At first, you change it subtly and then not so subtly in order to keep
- 13:01 the abuser in your life as the exclusive source, the exclusive supplier of this idealized rendition. And because your behavior changes with the abusers’s responses or with the abusers’s reinforcements, we call it intermittent reinforcement. The abuser
- 13:25 one day loves you, idealizes you, you can do no wrong, you’re a genius, you’re drop dead gorgeous, and so on. The next day you can do no right, you’re horrible, you’re ugly, you’re stupid. So you begin to identify some types of behaviors with the first reaction or
- 13:43 with the first responsive pattern with idealization and other types of behavior with devaluation. You begin to convince yourself that you are causing these cycles of idealization and devaluation that you’re responsible for them that you’re provoking them somehow. This is
- 13:59 called autoplastic defenses and this induces behavioral change or behavioral modification which is why we call the whole situation intermittent reinforcement. But you’re addicted to this intermittent reinforcement because 50% of the time you’re going to be
- 14:15 idealized and you’re willing to pay the price of 50% abuse, 50% horror, 50%
- 14:24 difficult emotions, 50% pain and torture. You’re willing to pay the 50% the cost of 50% hurtful words, hurtful behaviors in order to enjoy the 50% idealization phase. See, it is nothing like the idealization phase. This unconditional acceptance and love and warmth and
- 14:45 compassion and engulfment. They are the epitome, the apex of feeling good. And
- 14:55 so the abuser is perceived as a source of well-being and welfare rather than what it truly is, a beast.
