🕯️IFS and Trauma Bonds

A trauma bond, through the IFS lens, isn’t foolish attachment — it’s survival love. It’s how protectors cling to what once hurt them, believing safety can still be found there.

• A loyal part may stay connected to harm, hoping it can finally fix what broke.

• A fearful part may equate distance with abandonment.

• An exile may confuse pain with love because that’s how love once arrived.

IFS doesn’t shame these bonds — it understands them.

• “Who in me still feels tied to that person?”

• “What does that part hope to receive by staying close?”

  
  

As Self offers the safety and connection those parts once sought outside, the bond begins to loosen naturally — not from rejection, but from realization.

In IFS, breaking a trauma bond isn’t about cutting away — it’s about re-rooting love inside the system, where it can no longer be taken.