Becoming dependent on someone can put you at their mercy. And if they are toxic, you are not only now dependent on them for certain things, but they may make sure you continue to depend on them so you never get your wants and needs filled completely.
It’s like a bag of chips: You can never eat just one. You know they’re bad for you, but you keep coming back. Dependencies can can create hard-to-break trauma bonds.
And if you’re not careful, you could become permanently dependent on a toxic person
When you’re in a relationship with someone who hurts you, something strange happens in your brain. You start to associate love with pain. You begin to believe that in order to feel good, you have to feel bad first. This is what happens when trauma bonds form, and it’s one of the most confusing aspects of staying in a toxic relationship.
The more you depend on someone for your emotional needs, your happiness, your sense of security, the more power they have over you. And when that person is also the one causing you pain, you end up trapped in a cycle that’s incredibly hard to break.
Your dependencies person can keep you stuck with someone who traumatizes you.
Trauma bonding happens when you equate love and abuse. It forms when you’re in a toxic relationship, especially one that started off great (and they almost all start off great, so it can be hard to tell what’s coming).
The toxic person feeds you what you crave. That love, that support, that connection. Sometimes it’s the best relationship you’ve ever experienced.
In fact, you know they have such love and generosity in them because you’ve seen it many times. They support you and make you feel good… at the beginning.
This stage of the relationship where everything is new and exciting is one end of a pendulum swing. But as things settle, a toxic person’s true nature starts coming out. They start hurting you in subtle ways. You may not see it at first because you start thinking maybe you’re doing something wrong.
As time goes on, you realize the hurt and confusion you feel isn’t subsiding. In fact, it’s become a new normal. And you still aren’t sure what’s happening, you just know it doesn’t feel good.
In time, you end up with this persistent feeling of both love and pain, where you love them and you’re hurt by them. And you spend the rest of the relationship trying to feel that love and connection you felt at the beginning.
When love comes with all this baggage, it forms a trauma bond. In fact, the more love and support you seek from an abusive person, the more likely you’ll strengthen the trauma bond to the point where it feels impossible to let them go.
And when you’re dependent on a person who gives you love, support, and even finances or helping you out physically, and they also make you feel bad by showing up in emotionally abusive ways, it can be very difficult to separate the love from the abuse.
Because of all those dependencies, and the feelings of love that started off right at the beginning, you’ve created a bond with them that’s hard to break.
And even when they start acting badly, it’s hard to see them as this bad person. You might have a tendency to give them free pass after free pass.
I assume you’re a loving , supportive, and generous person and give people the benefit of the doubt. But these wonderful qualities about you can be what a toxic person takes advantage of.
When we tend to see only the good in others, we might miss who they really are.
The Different Forms Dependency Takes
There are several types of dependencies that can form in a relationship. Each one gives the other person more power over you.
In my previous relationships, I had a lot of emotional dependencies on my partner for my happiness, love, and feelings of peace and comfort.
And because they were my sole source of this, or at least a good 98% of it, I became very clingy and possessive. And if they weren’t providing that, I feared not having it.
I used to be highly insecure. I was afraid of abandonment and rejection. When my partner would go out with her friends, I would make her feel guilty for not spending time with me.
This emotional dependency created issues in the relationship. It caused her to feel as if she couldn’t be with family or friends unless she disappointed me, putting her in a very difficult place.
You can create your own trauma bond when you rely on those you love to fulfill an insecurity in you.
In other words, if you are afraid of being alone, and you find someone to share your life with, but you bring that fear into the relationship, you are forming a dependency on them for your happiness.
If you have trouble making decisions and are with someone who can make decisions quickly and easily, you create a reliance on them to make decisions for you.
The problem isn’t that someone might be able to fulfill your wants and needs. It’s when you rely on them so much to the point where you believe it will be impossible to be without them in your life.
The goal is to keep as much of your power as you can. ‘Keeping your power,’ at least the way I mean it, simply means being able to stand on your own two feet and make decisions for yourself.
I’m not saying any of this is easy. When you’re in a relationship with someone, when you live together and share bills, your decisions affect them and their decisions affect you. That’s normal.
But when you can’t make any decision without them, when every single thought involves them, that’s a different level of dependency. That’s when their influence over you can become problematic. And if they don’t have your best interests in mind, it is very hard to break the cycle.
Some people have physical dependencies where they need someone else to be there to help them. This could be due to disabilities or simply things they can’t do on their own. A disabled person who has to rely on an abusive person for daily living has got to be one of the most difficult of all situations.
Unfortunately, even if you’re not disabled, some toxic people will purposefully create situations where you need them. They might put things on the top shelf because they know it bothers you. Then they say, “Oh, I forgot you can’t reach,” which becomes part of the abuse cycle.
Why would they do that? Why make it difficult for you?
Because they want you to feel bad. They want you to feel incompetent. They are trying to create the very dependency that keeps you in their life because they are so insecure in themselves that they can’t think of what life would be like without you.
I know, it’s a strange mix of not wanting to lose you and squeezing you so tight you want to get away. That’s abuse-logic and it makes no sense.
One of the trickiest and most dangerous dependencies is when a toxic person’s words are in your brain and in your decision-making process. It’s dangerous because the more influenced you are by them, the less likely you’ll know your own thoughts.
People are in our lives. They’re in our thoughts. They’re in our decision-making processes. You might think, “I’m going to the store. I wonder if they want anything. I better go ask.” That is them influencing your thoughts without even being in the room.
You can’t think without certain people in your thoughts sometimes. That is a dependency, a thinking dependency with them in your thoughts.
The thinking dependency might be the hardest one because if you’re around someone, they’re going to be in your thoughts. You might think, “Let me take this person out of my thoughts,” but you already know how hard it is to not think of something you don’t want to think about.
Distance Is What Starts To Help You Clear Your Head
When you are away from a toxic person for a period of time, and it usually takes in my experience two to four months, eventually your head clears and your thinking dependencies start becoming more free. Your thinking becomes more free. And your dependencies minimize.
The more you think throughout this two to four month and beyond period of time, the less they are influencing. Clearing your head at first is difficult. They don’t even have to be in the room or anywhere close to you; In fact, you could be in no contact with them completely, but they can still occupy your thoughts.
My mom was in an abusive relationship for over 40 years. It took her about two months to be free of those toxic thoughts. Every thought she had before that two months passed had toxicity in it. She couldn’t even go to the store without thinking about him. She couldn’t even sit outside without thinking about him because her thoughts kept gravitating back toward him and what he put her through.
Even after he was gone, she couldn’t stop thinking about him as if he were still there:
She was worried about him coming outside and bothering or hurting her.
She was worried about him drinking and if he was going to ruin the moment.
She was worried about when she had friends over, if he was going to be an embarrassment.
She was worried about having family over because they suffered as well because of him being in her life.
Every single thought that she had involved him.
It took her several months to finally flush those thoughts away. But she didn’t do it purposefully. It just happened with time and distance from him.
I remember in the first few weeks after they split, I asked her as a joke, “Hey, if he said he wanted to come back, would you get back with him?” Her answer floored me. She said, “I might.”
I thought that was crazy! She finally got away from him and was free. She was living on her own without an abusive alcoholic constantly causing her to live in worry and fear.
She had told me repeatedly how much she hated him, how much she hated being around him or near him, and that she wished he would just go away.
But when she said she might consider taking him back, my mind was blown. That day really taught me a lot about how much a trauma bond can take hold of us.
After two months, though, she came to me and said, “You know, when I said that I would take him back? I can’t believe I said that. I don’t know what I was thinking. I would never take him back!”
From that point on, she was absolutely clear about what she wanted because she was finally thinking straight. Within that two to four month window that I often see, our heads can be foggy. And victims of abuse need that fog to lift so they can think more clearly. You can’t think clearly when an abuser’s influence is still present.
When that fog lifted for my mom, she said she didn’t know what she was thinking at the time. She was not in her right mind. She was in trauma. I was so proud of her for finally feeling her power and coming to the conclusion that she would never expose herself to that violence again.
She regained her power when she was finally independent of his influence. person.
Breaking Free From Dependency
The more independent you are, the less someone can have power over you. And that means the less they can hurt you.
Where are you dependent in your life?
What attachments do you have in your life that you believe you need, or that you have that you can’t get rid of?
What can you do to decrease your dependencies on others?
I prefer to look at the positive side of this: What can we do instead of what can’t we do?
As I have said in many ways so far, the less dependent you are on someone else to make your decisions, the more free you are to be yourself and less likely to be manipulated.
This might not feel possible. Some people have families and attachments that they can’t necessarily get out of. But every single little component and any single thing that you remove as an attachment or a dependency can help you gain more power.
The person who walks with no attachments and no dependencies is fully empowered.
They may not feel like that sometimes, but they have at least the ability to make decisions without anyone’s influence.
You should have the ability to make a decision, even if somebody’s influencing you. When you’re in a relationship with someone, when you live together and share bills, your decisions affect them and their decisions affect you. You may not feel fully empowered, and that’s normal.
But when bad behavior comes your way, you can say no, I don’t want this behavior in my life. That doesn’t mean you kick them out or you have to leave. It doesn’t mean you should never see them again. It just means you don’t want this behavior in your life. I means you don’t want to be hurt.
Whatever’s going on in their life, they need to work on their own stuff because, from your perspective, they are hurting you. That’s not loving, caring, compassionate, or supportive.
Toxic people will say, “Well, you are hurting me too.”
That could be true. You could be hurting them too. But if they say that, you can respond with, “That might be true. I could be hurting you and I don’t want to do that. But I know for a fact that you are hurting me. So if I’m hurting you too, tell me how I’m doing it and I’ll work on that. But here’s how you are hurting me. And you need to work on that.”
If they say, “I don’t need help, you do!” then you’re dealing with a brick wall. If you tell someone to go seek therapy, they may resist that unless they want to. But if you told them they are hurting you and you’re not going to take it anymore, that might be exactly what they need to hear.
You don’t have to tell them whatever they need to do. You could just say you’re not going to take it anymore because it’s about empowerment. It’s about empowering yourself so that you can make decisions that are right for you.
If somebody else wants to come along for your ride, the ride you are living in life -who you are – if somebody wants to be with who you are, then they need to play by the rules. You do that by telling them how you don’t and do like to be treated. You make that known.
You could say, “This is how I want to be treated.” You might even ask them, “Are you capable of doing that?” If they’re not, then maybe something else needs to happen. Maybe they may need to be held accountable.
Eventually your actions will follow your thinking. When you start working on any trauma bonds that have formed, when you start feeling like you are capable of doing more on your own, you can start to feel better in some ways without them.
It’s not that you can’t feel good with certain people because they will bring you certain feelings. Sometimes those feelings are happiness and joy and peace and comfort, and sometimes they’re not.
You start to make these little changes in your thinking and your behaviors and your decisions. You start creating the runway that you want to take off on and fly to the emotional destination you want.
When you have fewer dependencies, fewer emotional attachments that allow you to feel good inside yourself, you can bring this good feeling, good, loving, compassionate, caring person into somebody else’s life where they want to do the same for you.
When they don’t want to do the same thing for you, you might have an issue. You might have a difference of opinion or a difference in your approach, or your personalities are too clashing and you can’t get along.
On one side you have love and connection and support. On the other side, you have power and control and dominance.
As adults, we should all treat each other like we want to be treated. You want to be treated with love, kindness and respect. Will they do that for you as well? That’s the real question that needs an honest answer. And if they say yes but don’t follow through, you know everything you need to know.
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Paul Colaianni
Paul Colaianni is an Emotional Abuse Expert and Behavior and Relationship Specialist who has been analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in helping people recognize hidden manipulation, navigate emotionally abusive relationships, and empower themselves to make informed decisions.
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