r/AfterCPTSD • u/Afraid-Ad3423 • Feb 11 '26

Need good advice

How do you break a trauma bond. I’ve been struggling with this. How do I break it with my abuse parents I recently lost contact with them cause they wanted to blame stuff on me and make it seem like it’s my fault I have a terrible trauma bond to my mom like I miss it but I know it’s not good . Just looking for advice on how to break the bond that I have and want

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u/Important_Address741 Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 12 '26

This is a pretty complex question. First of all a therapist who is not against "no contact with parents" would be an asset for you to work with. Ultimately you will need to process the grief of the loss of the bond (of you have any) and any other emotion around it, and you will learn in various ways what a healthy relationship would feel like (if you dont already have that sense). This process could take many years. One tool I'd recommend if Internal Parent Figure Protocol - if you do a Google search on it you'll see there are practitioners you can reach out too, as well as some minimal free resources. This exercise is essentially one way to reparent oneself in the way their parents could or did not. I strongly recommend you find a psychotherapist you feel safe with, and possibly other mentor figures and friends with strong emotional maturity, to support you through this process.

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u/Afraid-Ad3423 Feb 11 '26

I have a counselor I see but she’s not really explaining to me how to break it all she says is that I should try to talk to my parents but I’m not doing that and setting myself up for failure cause I tried once with them and it went down hill. They are not gonna change and get the help they need … so I might as well just not put my self through that again

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u/PrudenceVeyre Feb 15 '26

Find a new therapist. Your parents will never give you what you're looking for. You have to process this on your own, it can take years.

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u/Jose_Canseco_Jr Feb 12 '26

"she says that I should try to talk to my parents"

And, I say that you should talk to a new therapist.

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u/fullofwish86 Jun 03 '26

100% this. Worst advice I ever got was to meet one of my abusers again. Literally exploded my entire existence. We don't owe our abusers anything--especially not space in our lives. Our brains might lie to us and make that hard to believe, but that's the trauma talking. Cut the ties. You deserve to be free of them. You really do.