"Why do you stay in prison when the cage door is so wide open?" Rumi
It's estimated that over one third of women murder victims are killed by their partner or spouse and 70-80% had experienced domestic violence prior to their death. When faced with the prevalence of domestic violence and the horrors these women and often their children endure, our first question is often to ask "why did she stay?". While this may seem like a logical and fair question, it also can imply culpability and failure on the part of the women who have been victimized. It also reflects a lack of understanding of the neurobiology of our attachment system and our response to danger/threat. In this blog post we will explore the nature of these phenomena to begin to establish a foundation to understand the roots of traumatic bonding.
Attachment system: Relationship as regulator
We are neurobiologically wired to SEEK attachment in times of danger and fear. If you have children or are around children for any length of time, think about what happens when they become frightened. If a child is scared they will seek their mother to soothe their fear and return to a state of equilibrium. I think about my own kids- even if they are fighting mad at me, if there is a bug in their room they are yelling at me to come kill it. Even though this is a minor (albeit true) example, the principle of seeking our attachment figure or in the case of adults, seeking those who are familiar to us, in times of emotional distress is a universal truth hardwired into our biology. It is well established in the attachment literature that having an attachment figure present can even modulate the neurobiological changes that happen when faced with a stressful situation. In one study, if the mother was holding her child when blood was being taken, their levels of the stress hormone cortisol were significantly reduced. Conversely, the results of the lack of a nurturing attachment figure is tragically illuminated by the high rates of children dying (30-75%) in orphanages in the 1900s when the eugenics movement and germ theory discouraged staff from bonding and touching the children. These children were diagnosed with no medical condition leading to their death, but rather a "failure to thrive" as a result of the lack of love and attachment bond. The positive effects from the presence of, as well as the tragic results from the absence of, a loving attachment figure clearly illustrates its critical role in our survival and how we are neurobiologically hardwired to seek familiarity and relationship when distressed.
Neurobiology of our stress response
In addition to the biology of our attachment system, the neurobiology of the nervous system's response to threat and danger is a significant contributing factor to consider as well. Biologically our body is programmed to release a series of chemicals when faced with actual or perceived danger in order to increase our chances of survival. Walter Cannon identified the fight or flight response to stress in the 1930s and this has dominated scientific thinking for decades. The sympathetic nervous system's arousal sends a rush of chemicals preparing our body to fight off the impending danger or to run away from it. However, recent research has elucidated the nature of our stress response system as more nuanced and complex than the fight/flight response. The stress research that identified the fight/flight stress response was conducted primarily on men, so it's applicability to women's neurobiological response to stress is limited. More recent gender inclusive research has broadened our understanding and has further delineated responses such as the freeze, faint, and the one we will focus on in this post- the tend and befriend strategy. In 2002 Shelley Taylor, a researcher from UCLA, identified tend and befriend as the most common first line of defense that arises for females when they face stress or threat. This is due in part from how women are biologically wired to be relational and is reflective of how women often tend to their children by protecting and nurturing, and befriend others through seeking social support to mediate their stress response. Additionally, the release of oxytocin (the potent hormone released after a woman gives birth) is a powerful reinforcer for social connection especially in women due to estrogen's amplifying effect. Researchers hypothesize that tend/befriend was evolutionarily more adaptive for females than fight/flight. Tend and befriend, like all survival and stress management strategies, helps regulate the cascade of stress hormones as well as highly intense and/or intolerable emotions, such as fear or terror.
In review, danger/threat activates necessary, but highly dysregulating survival emotions and a cascade of synchronized neurobiological responses designed to increase our survival and/or adaptation to the stress by getting us away from the threat, fighting it off, or modulating the arousal. Concurrently, danger activates our attachment system driving us to seek support from people in our environment as one means to increase our safety and decrease arousal. In most cases this is an adaptive and smart survival strategy for us- we are a species whose survival fares better when in a group. Women in particular have been shown to be predisposed to use affiliative strategies (tend and befriend) in response to stress, whereas men are more likely to use aggression. It is important to note, however, that these strategies are not mutually exclusive, but rather a biological predisposition that can and does interact with a myriad of other factors (for example, social, cultural, cognitive, socioeconomic, etc.).
Application to why women stay
The biology of our attachment hardwiring to seek familiarity when in danger and the tend/befriend relational survival mechanism often utilized in interpersonal danger (especially by women) lays the groundwork for understanding why women stay. If this is our biology, our subconscious survival strategy, it begs to question what happens when that significant other is the one who is inducing the terror? This paradox creates a double bind - it is like the gas pedal and the brake pedal being pushed at the same time- he is dangerous so we need to run away from him, but we are wired to run to him because he is familiar and/or our significant other. In attachment literature this has been found to be so dysregulating it creates a disorganized attachment style in children. It has been said that we can survive anything if we are not alone- indeed, it is more likely in this paradox that a woman will subconsciously choose connection even if it is with the one hurting her. Normalizing the abuse, blaming herself, minimizing the significance of the harm, or even rationalizing the abuser's behavior are all ways the woman can psychologically defend against the reality of what happened, reestablishing a pseudo sense of safety.
Attachment and bonding is a biological process that develops with time and the building of trust whereby one feels safe and secure in another's presence. Traumatic bonding is based on the opposite- it can be created rapidly in experiences of extreme fear and is enhanced by the lack of safety. A trauma bond (also called betrayal bond) is forged in an intense situation that involves an exploitation of power and/or trust where the victim denies the extent of the harm, has extreme loyalty towards and bonds with the person who caused her harm. Fear is known to intensify bonding even in animals. Think of the abused dog who is loyal to a fault to his abusive owner. Patrick Carnes in his seminal and groundbreaking book The Betrayal Bond- breaking free of exploitive relationships describes how betrayal "intensifies pathologically the human trait of bonding deeply in the presence of danger or fear" (p.xiv). Carnes also delineates how multiple influencing factors including extent of fear, number of years in the relationship with the abusive partner, the intermittent nature of the abuse (so there are positive interactions as well as abusive), and the closeness of the relationship can all strengthen and deepen the traumatic bonding.
When faced with another's propensity for cruelty whether physical or sexual, this fear response activates our survival strategies and the cascade of neurobiological chemicals to respond to the threat. These chemicals and intense emotions are adaptive in the short term to respond to threat, but are toxic to our system if left unchecked for too long. Think of the danger of psychogenic shock or the failure to thrive mentioned above in children in orphanages. Remember, a woman's propensity is to respond relationally with the tend and befriend response. The tend/befriend strategy attempts to assuage the danger by strengthening/deepening the relationship which unfortunately also concurrently strengthens the traumatic bond- it may help mediate the immediate risk and/or intense emotions, but often at a steep cost. Inherent in this strategy is denial of the danger the abuser presents which modulates the intense fear and terror at the cost of accurately seeing the danger for the risk it is. Additionally, denial prolongs the process of identifying the abuse for what is is and seeking help. Carnes describes this tendency as "You move closer to someone you know is destructive to you with the desire of converting him or her to a non-abuser" (p. 9). Most people who work with domestic violence and sexual abuse survivors or who have found themselves recovering from a trauma bond will identify this as a primary component- the seemingly illogical minimization of the risk inherent in staying and of the harm done. This awareness usually only fully emerges once the woman is out of the abusive relationship and true emotional, physical and sexual safety has been established. For children and adults the complexities of this double bind and trauma bonding defies platitudes and seemingly easy solutions.
Paradigm Shift
Perhaps instead of asking why a woman stays, a compelling paradigm shift would be to redirect the focus off of the woman survivor and to the perpetrator. To ask how someone could harm another human being, often their intimate partner, the mother of their children, and/or their children. The act of physically harming another person, of forcing sexual advances on someone who has said no or who is in a vulnerable position under you, of deliberately harming someone in any way- those are the acts that should incite our questions and outrage. As mammals we are social creatures and to harm another who is not causing you harm or those in your inner circle challenges not only our sense of morality but also the biological way that we are wired to take care of those closest to us. Although studies demonstrating oxytocin release (think pleasure, reward) between mothers and their children are prevalent, it has also been shown that this hormone is released between fathers and their children, as well as in romantic relationships. So if you feel good and make your loved one feel good, our physiology responds with a flood of chemicals that reinforces these positive, nurturing social connections. It's that important.
So why the discrepancy between the prevailing societal reaction and the illogical nature of focusing on why women stay with abusive partners rather than on why men abuse? I believe the primary reason for this potentially harmful phenomena that inherently deflects responsibility off of the abusive man and onto the woman who has been victimized is not that different than how the woman herself copes with this double bind. The dynamics and underpinning of victim blaming is a type of denial of the capacity of our fellow humans (especially ones we know) to commit harm, even evil. As humans, we all have the biological need to feel safe. When faced with the propensity for other humans to commit atrocities and nonsensical violence, it threatens this sense of safety. Psychological defense mechanisms exist in order to minimize information that our mind is unable to process. Victim blaming is a type of denial that allows the responsibility for the violence to be placed on the victim for the way she dressed, acted, or choices she made. This brings a sense of predictability to violence which by its nature can be capricious and random. If this horrific event happened to her because of (fill in the blank), I can mediate my fear by feeling a sense of control over my risk of being hurt by not (fill in the blank). I have now reestablished my world as orderly and my family and I as safe because of what we will or will not do. This is also evident at a societal level (think Jonestown) and even the systemic violence societies have had a tendency to turn a blind eye to. Although victim blaming and denial are understandably emotionally loaded words given the revictimization it causes for those who have already been harmed it is important to understand its roots as a psychological defense mechanism to establish and maintain a sense of safety.
Know better, do better
This knowledge primes us to see this as human tendency and therefore be more proactive to actively change one's own attitudes and to identify and counter the urge for complacency, minimization, and denial when faced with the capacity of fellow humans to do harm. From this place of compassion and grace to then also extend the same grace to those who are in or who are recovering from their own betrayal/trauma bond. To step into helping and supporting, creating an alternate support system to give those being exploited a helping hand out of their situation. It is from this place of being able to own it in ourselves (even if we have never personally experienced a trauma bond), we can then understand more deeply the survival strategy of others trapped in such a destructive relationship, offering more compassionate care and support
Have you experienced a betrayal/trauma bond? Do you have a loved one who has? I hope this post has offered you some understanding of this phenomena and has encouraged you to forgive yourself from the common guilt and self recriminations that occur for survivors. If you are still in a trauma bond I want you to know there is hope and resources out there and encourage you to find a professional to help you safely navigate your way to safety and ultimately, freedom. You matter, your story matters, and you deserve better.
Recommended resources:
The Betrayal Bond: Breaking free of exploitative relationships. Patrick Carnes
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
Do you wonder if you have a betrayal bond? Click here to take Dr. Carnes' free Betrayal Bond Index assessment:
A wonderful Christian resource for women who have experienced sexual betrayal in their relationship:
My dear sister blog https://mydearsister.home.blog/
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