"If your relationship is so bad, why don't you just leave them?"

"If you were in such an abusive relationship, why did you stay with them for so long?"

"If you knew you were in a relationship with such a toxic person, why didn't you ask people for help?"

If you've ever been asked these questions, aside from being ignorant and hurtful, you'll know it's beyond frustrating. The answer to the above questions, whilst it's complex and often confusing, can be given with two words: trauma bonded. If you find you're in a relationship that you know is so toxic that it's crushing your very being, but you can't bring yourself to leave, you may be in the clutches of a tight trauma bond.

If you're constantly feeling on edge, forever working to appease your spouse to little avail and feel like you're constantly being chipped away at with their abusive behavior, then I can understand how emotionally shattering it feels to live this way.

If, in the same breath, it breaks your heart to even consider leaving them because you can't imagine life without them, then I can understand that feeling too - because I was trauma bonded to my abusive ex.

From my own personal experience and from the experiences other survivors have opened up to me about, this book will cover the following:

• What trauma bonding really is
• The seven stages that lead to you becoming trauma bonded
• The parallels that Stockholm syndrome has with trauma bonding
• The five stages you go through when you come to accept you're trauma bonded - the cognitive dissonance a trauma bond can cause
• Breaking free from the traumatic bond

This book will also include my own experiences and I'll draw upon those to help you really understand trauma bonding, and let you know that you're not alone in being shackled by this emotionally crippling bond. More importantly, this book will help you understand that the invisible chain that tethers you to your abuser can be broken.