Product Description

Patrick Carnes presents an in-depth study of exploitive relationships: why they form, who is most susceptible, and how they become so powerful. He explains to readers how to recognize when traumatic bonding has occurred and provides a checklist so they can examine their own relationships. Included are steps readers can take to safely extricate themselves or their loved ones from these situations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20499 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781558745261
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author
Patrick J. Carnes is a nationally-known speaker on addiction and recovery issues. He is the author of Out of the Shadows, Contrary to Love, A Gentle Path Through the 12 Steps and Don't Call It Love. He is the clinical director for sexual disorder services at The Meadows in Wickenburg, Arizona. Carnes is the editor-in-chief of Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, the official journal of the National Council of Sexual Addiction/Compulsivity, an organization for which he also serves as a board member. He also serves on the national advisory board of the American Academy of Health Care Providers in the Addictive Disorders.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Lois was only twenty-two. Fresh out of college with a business degree in hand, she had landed a fabulous job with a large printing firm. She was ecstatic. She worked hard. The company gave her a car. She was attractive and fun. Her hard work and enthusiasm made up for her inexperience. Plus, she had support. Her boss, the marketing director, was also young by many people+s standards. Nearing thirty, she already had eight years of business experience. The company had grown dramatically and many chalked it up to her skill and untiring efforts. She took Lois under her wing and they became good colleagues and friends.

One day the marketing director left the office in tears. A memo came around saying she had resigned. Lois tried to reach her at home but there was no response to the messages she left. The president of the company asked Lois to come to his office. He talked of his sadness that the marketing director was no longer with the company. He also said that he now had a problem; he had no one to run marketing. He offered Lois the job.

Lois immediately accepted. She had mixed emotions because of the loss of her supervisor and because little was known about why she left, just the tears. Yet Lois knew this was a tremendous opportunity for her. The president told her that he had taken a chance on her previous supervisor being so young and it worked out well. Lois received a bonus and a significant raise. She threw herself into her work.

A week later the president asked Lois to his office to review her first week+s efforts. Lois could tell he was not totally pleased with what she had done but was unsure what he wanted. Then he launched into a description of what made her predecessor successful. Critical were her former bossÆs ôspecialö relationships with customers. In fact, for the buying agents of their key accounts she would perform oral sex. ThatÆs how the company kept business. As he talked, Lois went numb with disbelief. She came out of it when he said that their customers liked office sex in certain ways and he would show her how. Then he approached her. Lois stood up and told him that she would not do this for any price. She grabbed her personal belongings and left the company in tears.

She was devastated. Friends and family gathered around Lois. They found her a therapist. The therapist said that she had experienced an assault and would need to work it through or her life would suffer. Lois pulled herself together and responded by saying that it was only a proposition and she would simply forget about it.

The therapist was right. About a month after leaving her job, Lois started having nightmares about the company president and his office. She had difficulty motivating herself to find work. Interviews went badly. She moved back in with her parents, which added even more stress. She shut down sexually. She was critical of her boyfriend who, in fact, was very supportive. That relationship ended. She found herself continually angry with her former supervisor. She berated herself for being naive enough to think that the companyÆs success had anything to do with marketing. She was angry with her former employer yet obsessed with what was happening in the company. The betrayal for Lois was that nothing was as it had seemed. None of her ability, hard work, enthusiasm or creativity mattered. She had believed that people had taken her seriously. In reality management had been grooming her to be the company courtesan. How could she ever trust anyone again?

Lois was also a victim of her own ability to cope. At the time of the betrayal, she felt that it was something she could handle. Calling on ancient family traditions of facing adversity, toughing it out and forging ahead, she dismissed the significance of what had happened. Only in therapy did she start to understand that she had been victimized and admit that it was traumatic for her. Like many of us, Lois learned that she looked right at it and did not see it.

Stress becomes traumatic when danger, risk, fear or anxiety is present. For Lois, she lost in a matter of minutes all that she thought she had. Further, the insidious fear was planted that the only way she could be successful was by using her body. Her talent for business didnÆt matter. Plus, the unwanted advance of someone who had so much power over her well-being placed her in jeopardy. Yet Lois had defenses that helped her cope with the problem. She tended to normalize and minimize. Her body, however, knew.

When in jeopardy, our body mobilizes its defenses. All our physical systems achieve high states of readiness. Adrenaline flows. The electrochemical reactions between synapses in the brain accelerate. ItÆs just like an automobile driven at the maximum possible speed. The sustained, flat-out performance pushes the carÆs mechanical system past its limits. Pretty soon, things start to break down. Our bodies and minds will react the same way. When pushed past their limits, they begin to fall apart. Unlike a car, however, our bodies and minds can regenerate and recover. Some traumas that occur as a result of betrayal create damage that is residual. That is, we do not see it or understand it until later. Some traumas, especially over time, can alter how our systems operate.

Two factors are essential in understanding traumatic experiences: how far our systems are stretched and for how long. Figure 1.1 helps us understand how these two factors interact. Some events happen only once or just a few times, but the impact is so great that trauma occurs. The experience Lois had with the president of the company only lasted a few minutes, but the impact was significant and enduring. Rape, accident, assault and some types of child molestation fit this extreme form of trauma. So would being terminated without warning from a job after years of loyal service and excellent performance.

Some trauma experiences are relatively minor, but they happen every day. The hurt accumulates. Many acts of child neglect, for example, in themselves are not that serious. Every parent has moments of not being able to cover all the bases. A consistent pattern of neglect, however, creates incredible anxiety in a child and leaves serious lifelong wounds. Other examples include living in a toxic marriage or working in a toxic corporation. Little acts of degradation, manipulation, secrecy and shame on a daily basis take their toll. Trauma by accumulation sneaks up on its victims.

The compromises we make to trauma can deaden us over time. As one man described his recovery from a traumatizing marriage: ôIt was a full year after we split when I realized that my back felt different. It was relaxed and I could bend without effort. I had spent so many years braced for the next outburst, my back muscles were always tensed up. I never realized that while I was married.ö ItÆs like walking into a room with a bad smell. The longer you stay in the room, the more the smell will seem to dissipate. Your olfactory system actually adjusts to the offensive odor. ItÆs only by leaving the room that you will recover your sensitivity to the odor. ItÆs the same with high stress, danger or anxiety; your body and mind will adjust—and pay for it. Only after being away from traumatic circumstances will your sensitivity return.

Betrayals that cause horrendous and long-lasting traumas are the worst. Such was the Holocaust, or Vietnam, or Russia after StalinÆs purge followed by the Nazi invasion. These emotional scars can be so severe that generations descended from those surviving will react in ways that still reflect the original trauma. No amount of what appears to be normal makes it safe. Patterns and attitudes evolve far beyond the individual and are incorporated into the fabric of family and society.

Customer Reviews

Such a Powerful, Eye-Opening Book!
Have you been exploited by a therapist or minister, yet, inexplicably, keep running back to him? Have you been emotionally or physically abused by a spouse, but find it difficult to get out of the marriage --- or, if divorced, feel so bonded that it feels as if you're still married?

If so, please read this book! The book clearly explains why "the betrayal bond" is so powerful. I myself was sexually abused by two different "authority" figures when I was 4 and then again when I was 16. I carried deep shame about this, feeling I somehow carried a flaw within me that caused this to happen to me. Then, a year ago, I sought healing with a licensed marriage & family therapist who turned out to be completely unethical (kissing clients on the mouth, allowing family members & ex-girlfriends in group, soliciting business from clients for pyramid schemes, having clients working for him, etc.) He seduced me. I immediately cut of ties with the man but could not quit longing for him, all the while enraged at him and knowing how destructively insane this obsessive attachment was. Not until I read this book did I understand WHY I found it difficult to free myself from this therapist. Now I'm healing the original wounds with a trained social worker and am firmly on the road to recovery.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has experienced trauma bonding: child abuse, emotional abuse, professional exploitation, religious abuse, incest, serial infidelity, sexual harrassment. IT'S A MUST-READ for those in the healing professions, as well.

Subtitle: How To Bypass Repetitive Misery Syndrome
A copy of THE BETRAYAL BOND, given to me by who?, I don't recall, had been sitting on my bookshelf unread for at least two years when I finally took serious note of it, last Friday, June 22, 2001, while searching for yet another escapist novel. Actually, I was given no choice in the matter. Like a note to Alice (in Wonderland) the red lettered title suddenly jumped at me, screaming, "READ ME!" A day later, I emerged from reading, and answering the various questionaires, if not a new woman, a profoundly altered one.

Where do I begin? In the beginning I was a severely beaten and incestuously molested girl and teenager. Then I married a man who said I was "nothing" compared to him and abandoned me for months at a time or beat me to make that point even clearer. Then I divorced him and worked my way through a series of disasterous relationships with men who had no intention of remaining faithful. I went to Al-Anon for several years but that only got me over the alcohol-related stuff. Affiliation with a 12 Step group still did not prevent me from entering what proved to be the most devestating relationship of all in which I was sexually exploitated by a Catholic priest who dangled the promise of marriage, only to renig on it after he was ordered by his superior into sex offender treatment.

He is still a priest, who now attends Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings, and I am over the worst of the post-traumatic shock disorder I suffered from after learning about his Mr. Hyde side.

So, I have to assume this was the perfect time for me to finally read this book, because I was really ready for it. I all but inhaled the thing, nodding along rapidly, recognizing myself in so much of it it was painful, but freeing as well. I have tools now. I'm not a lost cause. I don't have to avoid men for the balance of my life; I just have to become a lot more conscious of what I'm doing and why. This is particularly a godsend because the reader can begin to use this, without the help of others, as a way to rebuild the ability to deal with others again.

I particularly like the comprehensiveness of this book. There is not one type of abuse, personal, social or institutional that Carnes doesn't discuss. He hits them all, with bullseye accuracy. There is no where to hide in this book and that's precisely what makes it so great -- a powerful testament to the assertion "the truth shall set you free." Amen!

However, I was disappointed to note that Carnes' support group listing at the back of the book does not include clergy (or religious) abuse support groups. This is a serious omission given the fact he provides so many references to clergy and religious abuse throughout the book. In reprints of this book, I hope he will amend that oversight as there are several such groups in existence throughout the world. I belong to one and know that I would probably be dead of suicide by now if I hadn't been referred to the support group I now belong to, by my therapist. Most people think clergy abuse is only about sexual molestation of children or adolescents by their pastor, but it's not. And people like me, who needlessly suffer alone, in the belief there are not others out there like them need desperately to be told otherwise.

Carnes book represents a remarkable breakthrough in terms of exposing all the insidiously complex and baffling psychological mechanisms that keep abuse and betrayal bonding at the denial level. As with the 12 Steps, this book is only a first step in dismantling the overall problem. But what a powerful Step in the right direction it is. More, more!

One of a kind book
I searched all over for a book about Betrayal Bonds, Trauma Bonds, or Stockholm Syndrome. I am a survivor of multiple long-term childhood sexual traumas. I was abused by a parent figure (and also other people). In the primary abusive relationship I bonded to the offender through the need for love, as a means of survival, and in reaction to extreme terror (among many other reasons). As a teen and young adult I was involved in dangerous relationships and again sexually assaulted multiple times. It is amazing how betrayal bonds of all different kinds have so much in common. This book will help you to understand betrayal bonds, and as a workbook it is a great help for learning how to break the patterns of abuse.

I am 25 now, and happily married to a kind and healthy man, but I am often held back from healing because of the bond I still feel towards the abuser(s). I have also come to realize that I still play out these patterns in my life on a smaller scale. I can not recommend this book enough. It truly is a lifesaver. I finally feel that I am able to reclaim my life from the abusers who tried to steal it from me. This book helped me to understand and validate the effects abuse has had upon my life, body, mind, and spirit. It helped me to face what I went through. The very last chapter was most incredible of all. Patrick Carnes offered great insight into why we continue these patterns of betrayal bonding and how we can gain the courage, strength, and self love to end the patterns. He also has a very accessible approach to healing the spiritual effects of abuse (as well as many other common effects of abuse and deep trauma). This book will always be one of the books that has helped me the most on my journey to recovery and healing. This book has also helped me to feel safe in allowing myself to deeply trust.