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This Book Will Change The Way We Heal Trauma-Bonded Relationships!

Order Yours Today!

Buy Loving You Is Hurting Me Today 

and Receive Your Free Gift!

($100 Value)


The Best Life Blueprint Course


Embark on a guided, self-healing course with approximately 5 hours of self-growth content PLUS interactive exercises, engaging reflections, and take-home assignments to continue your transformation.

On your own time, start incorporating the 6 proven strategies known to increase happiness and improve wellbeing. You will complete this course with a deeper understanding of ways to overcome suffering, loneliness, and self-defeating thoughts. More importantly, you will discover a new appreciation for life! In these informative modules you will learn how:

1. Wellbeing Is A Journey

2. Happiness Can Be Learned

3. Kindness Can Be Nurtured

4. Love Can Be Found

5. Hope Can Be Nourished

6. Your Best Life Can Be Actualized

Instructions:

1. Take a screenshot of your purchase confirmation of Loving You Is Hurting Me

2. Send it to my team by emailing: support@TheLifePathway.com

3. Please include “BEST LIFE BLUEPRINT” in the Subject line of the email

We will be emailing you access to your online portal within the week

Real People, Real Healing

"This book picks up where The Body Keeps Score left off in my opinion, offering practical strategies and powerful insights that helped me make immediate changes in my personal life AND love life."
Helen P
"What an incredible healing journey for anyone that has ever went through a painful relationship that deeply impacted them, whether from childhood or an adult romantic relationships. It's true what Dr. Copley says: "Our relationships shape us," and breaks she down how that happens and what we need to do to heal. Seriously, read this book. Soak it in. And then pass it on to someone else in need.
Nathan
"I learned more about myself, my traumas, and my infinite possibilities in this one book than in my entire 35 years of my life."
Melissa

Experts Agree

“A compassionate and concrete guide on healing the trauma that gets in the way of having fulfilling relationships, Loving You is Hurting Me offers a groundbreaking perspective on unravelling old toxic patterns and creating a life rich with love, connection, and purpose. Through her expertise as both a therapist and trauma bond survivor, Laura takes our hand and leads us through a deeper understanding of our family origins and helps us reclaim our story of healing and transformation.”

Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast

"This is a read for anyone who is in a relationship or wants to be in a relationship. Dr. Copley does a fantastic job of breaking down an intimidating topic in a way that is thorough, digestible and tangible so you can actually make change. This book gives us a clear guide to understanding ourselves in a way that can lead us to the relationships we all deserve!"

Stacey Sherrell, LMFT and Co-Founder of Decoding Couples --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

"Beautifully written…a must-read for therapists and clients alike! Seamlessly incorporating research, psycho-education, and a variety of creative modalities, as well as poignant case examples and moving anecdotes from the author’s own life, we are invited to compassionately explore the dynamics of attachment trauma and the subsequent wounding, shame, and inevitable trauma bonds that are perpetuated and reenacted in adult relationships. Despite the difficult subject matter, Dr. Copley constantly and lovingly reminds us that we possess the capacity to tap into our own magical wisdom, self-compassion, and inner guardians, and offers thought-provoking and meaningful tools to help us navigate the journey from trauma to transformation and post-traumatic growth."

Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C, author of Finding Your Ruby Slippers: Transformative Life Lessons from the Therapist’s Couch

"When couples get stuck in toxic patterns it’s often not enough to problem-solve and look for solutions. Sometimes to go forward, you have to first go down: into the relationship’s emotional underground. And what’s often there beneath the surface is trauma: two people held together by the pain of their pasts and trapped in patterns that persistently re-traumatize. Thankfully, Laura Copley is right there to guide us, shining a bright light on our emotional underground and showing us that the only way out is not back up, but “through.”

Ian Kerner, sex therapist and NY Times best-selling author of She Comes First

“Dr. Laura Copley has seamlessly woven together research, clinical tools, and memoir to offer us a powerful journey home to ourselves. This book is for everyone who has known hurt but who also knows, even if only quietly in this moment, that they are worthy of wholeness."

Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon, faculty, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University; bestselling author, Love Every Day; podcast host, Reimagining Love

Excerpts

Chapter One: Am I Trauma Bonded?
Now, every textbook and self-help book say this interaction is toxic. They recommend that the victim learn to recognize that he or she is being mistreated by an abuser. The problem with Sheila and David was, that it was not clear who the victim or the abuser is. There was something different about Sheila and David’s interaction; something beneath the surface, just as there had been in my own marriage.

“This is how much he matters to you, isn’t it?” I said to Sheila. They both looked at me in silence. “This is how much he matters; this is how important he is to you. The desperate need for him to understand your pain. The urgency to tell him all the things he did to hurt you, like you’re begging him to just get it. The need to control, the tone in your voice, the trembling of your hands, the tension in your body… It is all because this is how much he matters to your heart. Only he can do this to you.”

Silence.

Sheila’s eyes changed and a single tear rolled down her cheek. The angry, fearful, flustered woman softened into her body and showed true vulnerability. And she finally spoke simply and honestly from her core.

“Yes,” she said. “All I want is for him to love me back. And it’s exhausting to force someone to love you like I have to with him.” Her voice cracked. She wasn’t angry; she was lonely and heartbroken. “I… I just want him to love me like I love him.”

Her courage in speaking that true desire stunned her husband. was listening, not from a place of defensiveness or shutdown, but from a place of empathy, compassion, and awe. He was taking her in, and his body shifted as he showed his own vulnerability. He was about to take a risk. And slowly in that silence, he reached for her hand.
Chapter Two: Why the Trauma Bond Takes Hold
Imagine living inside a body that did not send you the cues necessary to meet your basic needs; instead, it signaled to you strange and chaotic emotions you didn’t understand. A body that sent you spiraling with flooding emotional sensations at one point and then shut down all sensations the next. Imagine living with a brain that constantly told you lies about what you were perceiving, that made you second-guess and triple-guess every choice you made, every action of care or love from someone, that refused to recall the colors, and textures, and emotions, and details of precious moments in your life. Imagine constantly living from a place of uncertainty, insecurity, and self-doubt. Imagine believing that the very core of you was broken or bad, or even worse—that you didn’t have a core self at all. Imagine the powerlessness, the helplessness, the fear. The shame. Imagine so desperately longing to be loved, cherished, and connected to another human being but following through on those very desires also being the absolute scariest thing you could do. Or maybe you don’t need to imagine it. Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. Survivors of attachment trauma don’t fear the worst-case scenario in their relationships. They relive it every day because the abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, and rejection really happened.
Chapter Six: The Toxic Hook and Breaking Free of Painful Patterns
It is in our nature as human beings to experience the world in an emotional and sensory way. To deeply experience life, we must be present in our bodies. We must realize that our bodies surge with sensation even before language can label the containers for our feelings. For those of us who have experienced attachment trauma and form resulting trauma bonds with others, our bodies flood with certain sensations when we perceive as a threat of disconnection or intimacy. Slowing down what these sensations are in the moment so that you are no longer identifying with them, but simply experiencing and understanding them, is the key in unlocking the trauma bond and unraveling the Toxic Hook that is sabotaging your life.

While I cannot go back in time and change what happened to you, I can help you change the emotional content and meaning you attribute to what happened. This will look like evolving your memory from a trauma narrative to a healing narrative. At your essence, you are a brilliant, meaning making being who is wired to survive. It is important that the meaning you give to your story is one that is aligned with your truest self and facilitates growth and healing.
Chapter Seven: Trauma Transformation and Creating Purpose
Sometimes stepping across the threshold from trauma into transformation requires a leap of faith… or at least a shuffle of your feet. Let’s explore what that actually means and what it looks like. During the hardest moments of your trauma bond, you may have felt shattered, exhausted, and heartbroken, clinging to whatever semblance of a life or relationship to feign normalcy. Maintaining this trauma bond state depleted your energy, and you may have felt helpless and powerless. You replayed all those lost opportunities to do something different or break the cycle repeatedly in your mind. That’s when the shame narrative crept in. “If I was only strong enough…” “I should have done this differently…” “I could have been so much more than this…” You may have felt like it was too late to start over. Or that you didn’t have it in you, whatever that “it” is. This was a dark place, in which the harder you fought against what was happening the more you feared the abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, or rejection. It was hard to sustain hope for your future or trust in yourself when those fears wouldn’t go away.

But then something powerful happened. You reached a threshold, an impasse within yourself where the pain of staying the same became greater than the fear of changing. The journey we’ve been on has brought you to this threshold. You stand there now with new knowledge and insight about trauma, your relationships, and your life. It’s not my intent to push you blithely into the unknown. I know what I am asking can feel uneasy, especially if you’ve never been taught about this reservoir of resilience stored within your mind and body.

In the beginning of our work, the idea of transformation perhaps seemed foreign or unobtainable. I know the path toward it is not as simple as taking a leap of faith; you do not have to make some fearless, monumental move to take this step. On my own journey, I certainly didn’t. You are allowed to stand up with shaky limbs, you’re allowed to go forward with tears in your eyes and a sob in your throat, you are allowed to tremble as you walk toward the version of you that is happy, peaceful, inspired, and radiating.

Why This Book Is Different

· This book is the only trade book written by a practicing trauma-informed therapist who not only addresses ways to heal complex trauma, but also teaches readers how to cultivate positive transformation and Post-Traumatic Growth in their personal lives AND relationships.

· This is the first book that takes the shame out of the trauma bond by removing language that labels and stigmatizes, giving readers permission to fully explore their own personal role in the toxic dance from a place of self compassion, insight, and courage.

· This book is the first trade book written by a PhD trauma therapist that explains how most “toxic” emotions and behaviors are actually symptoms of underlying trauma and how, through intensive work, they can be treated.

· This is the only professionally guided self-exploration book that includes step-by-step, interactive, trauma-informed healing strategies to immediately address your own toxic tendencies from a place of self-trust and how they play out in relationships throughout your life.

Click To Pre-Order Now!

Follow Laura On Social

Facebook Instagram Youtube Tiktok

This Book Will Change The Way We Heal Trauma-Bonded Relationships!

Order Yours Now!

Order Loving You Is Hurting Me Today and Receive Your Free Gift 

($100 Value)


The Best Life Blueprint Course


Embark on a guided, self-healing course with approximately 5 hours of self-growth content PLUS interactive exercises, engaging reflections, and take-home assignments to continue your transformation.


On your own time, start incorporating the 6 proven strategies known to increase happiness and improve wellbeing. You will complete this course with a deeper understanding of ways to overcome suffering, loneliness, and self-defeating thoughts. More importantly, you will discover a new appreciation for life! In these informative modules you will learn how:


1. Wellbeing Is A Journey

2. Happiness Can Be Learned

3. Kindness Can Be Nurtured

4. Love Can Be Found

5. Hope Can Be Nourished

6. Your Best Life Can Be Actualized


Instructions:

1. Take a screenshot of your purchase confirmation of Loving You Is Hurting Me

2. Send it to my team by emailing: support@TheLifePathway.com

3. Please include “BEST LIFE BLUEPRINT” in the Subject line of the email


We will be emailing you access to your online portal within the week

Real People, Real Healing

"This book picks up where The Body Keeps Score left off in my opinion, offering practical strategies and powerful insights that helped me make immediate changes in my personal life AND love life."
Helen P
"What an incredible healing journey for anyone that has ever went through a painful relationship that deeply impacted them, whether from childhood or an adult romantic relationships. It's true what Dr. Copley says: "Our relationships shape us," and breaks she down how that happens and what we need to do to heal. Seriously, read this book. Soak it in. And then pass it on to someone else in need.
Nathan
"I learned more about myself, my traumas, and my infinite possibilities in this one book than in my entire 35 years of my life."
Melissa

Experts Agree

“A compassionate and concrete guide on healing the trauma that gets in the way of having fulfilling relationships, Loving You is Hurting Me offers a groundbreaking perspective on unravelling old toxic patterns and creating a life rich with love, connection, and purpose. Through her expertise as both a therapist and trauma bond survivor, Laura takes our hand and leads us through a deeper understanding of our family origins and helps us reclaim our story of healing and transformation.”

Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast

"This is a read for anyone who is in a relationship or wants to be in a relationship. Dr. Copley does a fantastic job of breaking down an intimidating topic in a way that is thorough, digestible and tangible so you can actually make change. This book gives us a clear guide to understanding ourselves in a way that can lead us to the relationships we all deserve!"

Stacey Sherrell, LMFT and Co-Founder of Decoding Couples --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

"Beautifully written…a must-read for therapists and clients alike! Seamlessly incorporating research, psycho-education, and a variety of creative modalities, as well as poignant case examples and moving anecdotes from the author’s own life, we are invited to compassionately explore the dynamics of attachment trauma and the subsequent wounding, shame, and inevitable trauma bonds that are perpetuated and reenacted in adult relationships. Despite the difficult subject matter, Dr. Copley constantly and lovingly reminds us that we possess the capacity to tap into our own magical wisdom, self-compassion, and inner guardians, and offers thought-provoking and meaningful tools to help us navigate the journey from trauma to transformation and post-traumatic growth."

Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C, author of Finding Your Ruby Slippers: Transformative Life Lessons from the Therapist’s Couch

"When couples get stuck in toxic patterns it’s often not enough to problem-solve and look for solutions. Sometimes to go forward, you have to first go down: into the relationship’s emotional underground. And what’s often there beneath the surface is trauma: two people held together by the pain of their pasts and trapped in patterns that persistently re-traumatize. Thankfully, Laura Copley is right there to guide us, shining a bright light on our emotional underground and showing us that the only way out is not back up, but “through.”

Ian Kerner, sex therapist and NY Times best-selling author of She Comes First

“Dr. Laura Copley has seamlessly woven together research, clinical tools, and memoir to offer us a powerful journey home to ourselves. This book is for everyone who has known hurt but who also knows, even if only quietly in this moment, that they are worthy of wholeness."

Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon, faculty, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University; bestselling author, Love Every Day; podcast host, Reimagining Love

Excerpts

Chapter One: Am I Trauma Bonded?
Now, every textbook and self-help book say this interaction is toxic. They recommend that the victim learn to recognize that he or she is being mistreated by an abuser. The problem with Sheila and David was, that it was not clear who the victim or the abuser is. There was something different about Sheila and David’s interaction; something beneath the surface, just as there had been in my own marriage.

“This is how much he matters to you, isn’t it?” I said to Sheila. They both looked at me in silence. “This is how much he matters; this is how important he is to you. The desperate need for him to understand your pain. The urgency to tell him all the things he did to hurt you, like you’re begging him to just get it. The need to control, the tone in your voice, the trembling of your hands, the tension in your body… It is all because this is how much he matters to your heart. Only he can do this to you.”

Silence.

Sheila’s eyes changed and a single tear rolled down her cheek. The angry, fearful, flustered woman softened into her body and showed true vulnerability. And she finally spoke simply and honestly from her core.

“Yes,” she said. “All I want is for him to love me back. And it’s exhausting to force someone to love you like I have to with him.” Her voice cracked. She wasn’t angry; she was lonely and heartbroken. “I… I just want him to love me like I love him.”

Her courage in speaking that true desire stunned her husband. was listening, not from a place of defensiveness or shutdown, but from a place of empathy, compassion, and awe. He was taking her in, and his body shifted as he showed his own vulnerability. He was about to take a risk. And slowly in that silence, he reached for her hand.
Chapter Two: Why the Trauma Bond Takes Hold
Imagine living inside a body that did not send you the cues necessary to meet your basic needs; instead, it signaled to you strange and chaotic emotions you didn’t understand. A body that sent you spiraling with flooding emotional sensations at one point and then shut down all sensations the next. Imagine living with a brain that constantly told you lies about what you were perceiving, that made you second-guess and triple-guess every choice you made, every action of care or love from someone, that refused to recall the colors, and textures, and emotions, and details of precious moments in your life. Imagine constantly living from a place of uncertainty, insecurity, and self-doubt. Imagine believing that the very core of you was broken or bad, or even worse—that you didn’t have a core self at all. Imagine the powerlessness, the helplessness, the fear. The shame. Imagine so desperately longing to be loved, cherished, and connected to another human being but following through on those very desires also being the absolute scariest thing you could do. Or maybe you don’t need to imagine it. Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. Survivors of attachment trauma don’t fear the worst-case scenario in their relationships. They relive it every day because the abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, and rejection really happened.
Chapter Six: The Toxic Hook and Breaking Free of Painful Patterns
It is in our nature as human beings to experience the world in an emotional and sensory way. To deeply experience life, we must be present in our bodies. We must realize that our bodies surge with sensation even before language can label the containers for our feelings. For those of us who have experienced attachment trauma and form resulting trauma bonds with others, our bodies flood with certain sensations when we perceive as a threat of disconnection or intimacy. Slowing down what these sensations are in the moment so that you are no longer identifying with them, but simply experiencing and understanding them, is the key in unlocking the trauma bond and unraveling the Toxic Hook that is sabotaging your life.

While I cannot go back in time and change what happened to you, I can help you change the emotional content and meaning you attribute to what happened. This will look like evolving your memory from a trauma narrative to a healing narrative. At your essence, you are a brilliant, meaning making being who is wired to survive. It is important that the meaning you give to your story is one that is aligned with your truest self and facilitates growth and healing.
Chapter Seven: Trauma Transformation and Creating Purpose
Sometimes stepping across the threshold from trauma into transformation requires a leap of faith… or at least a shuffle of your feet. Let’s explore what that actually means and what it looks like. During the hardest moments of your trauma bond, you may have felt shattered, exhausted, and heartbroken, clinging to whatever semblance of a life or relationship to feign normalcy. Maintaining this trauma bond state depleted your energy, and you may have felt helpless and powerless. You replayed all those lost opportunities to do something different or break the cycle repeatedly in your mind. That’s when the shame narrative crept in. “If I was only strong enough…” “I should have done this differently…” “I could have been so much more than this…” You may have felt like it was too late to start over. Or that you didn’t have it in you, whatever that “it” is. This was a dark place, in which the harder you fought against what was happening the more you feared the abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, or rejection. It was hard to sustain hope for your future or trust in yourself when those fears wouldn’t go away.

But then something powerful happened. You reached a threshold, an impasse within yourself where the pain of staying the same became greater than the fear of changing. The journey we’ve been on has brought you to this threshold. You stand there now with new knowledge and insight about trauma, your relationships, and your life. It’s not my intent to push you blithely into the unknown. I know what I am asking can feel uneasy, especially if you’ve never been taught about this reservoir of resilience stored within your mind and body.

In the beginning of our work, the idea of transformation perhaps seemed foreign or unobtainable. I know the path toward it is not as simple as taking a leap of faith; you do not have to make some fearless, monumental move to take this step. On my own journey, I certainly didn’t. You are allowed to stand up with shaky limbs, you’re allowed to go forward with tears in your eyes and a sob in your throat, you are allowed to tremble as you walk toward the version of you that is happy, peaceful, inspired, and radiating.

Why This Book Is Different

· This book is the only trade book written by a practicing trauma-informed therapist who not only addresses ways to heal complex trauma, but also teaches readers how to cultivate positive transformation and Post-Traumatic Growth in their personal lives AND relationships.

· This is the first book that takes the shame out of the trauma bond by removing language that labels and stigmatizes, giving readers permission to fully explore their own personal role in the toxic dance from a place of self compassion, insight, and courage.

· This book is the first trade book written by a PhD trauma therapist that explains how most “toxic” emotions and behaviors are actually symptoms of underlying trauma and how, through intensive work, they can be treated.

· This is the only professionally guided self-exploration book that includes step-by-step, interactive, trauma-informed healing strategies to immediately address your own toxic tendencies from a place of self-trust and how they play out in relationships throughout your life.

Click To Pre-Order Now!

This Book Will Change The Way We Heal Trauma-Bonded Relationships!

Order Yours Now

Follow Laura On Social

Facebook Instagram Youtube Tiktok

Order Loving You Is Hurting Me Today and Receive Your Free Gift!

$100 Value


The Best Life Blueprint Course


Embark on a guided, self-healing course with approximately 5 hours of self-growth content PLUS interactive exercises, engaging reflections, and take-home assignments to continue your transformation.


On your own time, start incorporating the 6 proven strategies known to increase happiness and improve wellbeing. You will complete this course with a deeper understanding of ways to overcome suffering, loneliness, and self-defeating thoughts. More importantly, you will discover a new appreciation for life! In these informative modules you will learn how:


1. Wellbeing Is A Journey

2. Happiness Can Be Learned

3. Kindness Can Be Nurtured

4. Love Can Be Found

5. Hope Can Be Nourished

6. Your Best Life Can Be Actualized


Instructions:

1. Take a screenshot of your purchase confirmation of Loving You Is Hurting Me

2. Send it to my team by emailing: support@TheLifePathway.com

3. Please include “BEST LIFE BLUEPRINT” in the Subject line of the email


We will be emailing you access to your online portal within the week

Real People, Real Healing

"This book picks up where The Body Keeps Score left off in my opinion, offering practical strategies and powerful insights that helped me make immediate changes in my personal life AND love life."
Helen P
"What an incredible healing journey for anyone that has ever went through a painful relationship that deeply impacted them, whether from childhood or an adult romantic relationships. It's true what Dr. Copley says: "Our relationships shape us," and breaks she down how that happens and what we need to do to heal. Seriously, read this book. Soak it in. And then pass it on to someone else in need.
Nathan
"I learned more about myself, my traumas, and my infinite possibilities in this one book than in my entire 35 years of my life."
Melissa

Experts Agree

“A compassionate and concrete guide on healing the trauma that gets in the way of having fulfilling relationships, Loving You is Hurting Me offers a groundbreaking perspective on unravelling old toxic patterns and creating a life rich with love, connection, and purpose. Through her expertise as both a therapist and trauma bond survivor, Laura takes our hand and leads us through a deeper understanding of our family origins and helps us reclaim our story of healing and transformation.”

Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast

"This is a read for anyone who is in a relationship or wants to be in a relationship. Dr. Copley does a fantastic job of breaking down an intimidating topic in a way that is thorough, digestible and tangible so you can actually make change. This book gives us a clear guide to understanding ourselves in a way that can lead us to the relationships we all deserve!"

Stacey Sherrell, LMFT and Co-Founder of Decoding Couples --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

"When couples get stuck in toxic patterns it’s often not enough to problem-solve and look for solutions. Sometimes to go forward, you have to first go down: into the relationship’s emotional underground. And what’s often there beneath the surface is trauma: two people held together by the pain of their pasts and trapped in patterns that persistently re-traumatize. Thankfully, Laura Copley is right there to guide us, shining a bright light on our emotional underground and showing us that the only way out is not back up, but “through.”

Ian Kerner, sex therapist and NY Times best-selling author of She Comes First

"Beautifully written…a must-read for therapists and clients alike! Seamlessly incorporating research, psycho-education, and a variety of creative modalities, as well as poignant case examples and moving anecdotes from the author’s own life, we are invited to compassionately explore the dynamics of attachment trauma and the subsequent wounding, shame, and inevitable trauma bonds that are perpetuated and reenacted in adult relationships. Despite the difficult subject matter, Dr. Copley constantly and lovingly reminds us that we possess the capacity to tap into our own magical wisdom, self-compassion, and inner guardians, and offers thought-provoking and meaningful tools to help us navigate the journey from trauma to transformation and post-traumatic growth."

Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C, author of Finding Your Ruby Slippers: Transformative Life Lessons from the Therapist’s Couch

“Dr. Laura Copley has seamlessly woven together research, clinical tools, and memoir to offer us a powerful journey home to ourselves. This book is for everyone who has known hurt but who also knows, even if only quietly in this moment, that they are worthy of wholeness."

Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon, faculty, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University; bestselling author, Love Every Day; podcast host, Reimagining Love

Excerpts

Chapter One: Am I Trauma Bonded
Now, every textbook and self-help book say this interaction is toxic. They recommend that the victim learn to recognize that he or she is being mistreated by an abuser. The problem with Sheila and David was, that it was not clear who the victim or the abuser is. There was something different about Sheila and David’s interaction; something beneath the surface, just as there had been in my own marriage.

“This is how much he matters to you, isn’t it?” I said to Sheila. They both looked at me in silence. “This is how much he matters; this is how important he is to you. The desperate need for him to understand your pain. The urgency to tell him all the things he did to hurt you, like you’re begging him to just get it. The need to control, the tone in your voice, the trembling of your hands, the tension in your body… It is all because this is how much he matters to your heart. Only he can do this to you.”

Silence.

Sheila’s eyes changed and a single tear rolled down her cheek. The angry, fearful, flustered woman softened into her body and showed true vulnerability. And she finally spoke simply and honestly from her core.

“Yes,” she said. “All I want is for him to love me back. And it’s exhausting to force someone to love you like I have to with him.” Her voice cracked. She wasn’t angry; she was lonely and heartbroken. “I… I just want him to love me like I love him.”

Her courage in speaking that true desire stunned her husband. was listening, not from a place of defensiveness or shutdown, but from a place of empathy, compassion, and awe. He was taking her in, and his body shifted as he showed his own vulnerability. He was about to take a risk. And slowly in that silence, he reached for her hand.
Chapter Two: Why the Trauma Bond Takes Hold
Imagine living inside a body that did not send you the cues necessary to meet your basic needs; instead, it signaled to you strange and chaotic emotions you didn’t understand. A body that sent you spiraling with flooding emotional sensations at one point and then shut down all sensations the next. Imagine living with a brain that constantly told you lies about what you were perceiving, that made you second-guess and triple-guess every choice you made, every action of care or love from someone, that refused to recall the colors, and textures, and emotions, and details of precious moments in your life. Imagine constantly living from a place of uncertainty, insecurity, and self-doubt. Imagine believing that the very core of you was broken or bad, or even worse—that you didn’t have a core self at all. Imagine the powerlessness, the helplessness, the fear. The shame. Imagine so desperately longing to be loved, cherished, and connected to another human being but following through on those very desires also being the absolute scariest thing you could do. Or maybe you don’t need to imagine it. Maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. Survivors of attachment trauma don’t fear the worst-case scenario in their relationships. They relive it every day because the abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, and rejection really happened.
Chapter Six: The Toxic Hook and Breaking Free of Painful Patterns
It is in our nature as human beings to experience the world in an emotional and sensory way. To deeply experience life, we must be present in our bodies. We must realize that our bodies surge with sensation even before language can label the containers for our feelings. For those of us who have experienced attachment trauma and form resulting trauma bonds with others, our bodies flood with certain sensations when we perceive as a threat of disconnection or intimacy. Slowing down what these sensations are in the moment so that you are no longer identifying with them, but simply experiencing and understanding them, is the key in unlocking the trauma bond and unraveling the Toxic Hook that is sabotaging your life.

While I cannot go back in time and change what happened to you, I can help you change the emotional content and meaning you attribute to what happened. This will look like evolving your memory from a trauma narrative to a healing narrative. At your essence, you are a brilliant, meaning making being who is wired to survive. It is important that the meaning you give to your story is one that is aligned with your truest self and facilitates growth and healing.
Chapter Seven: Trauma Transformation and Creating Purpose
Sometimes stepping across the threshold from trauma into transformation requires a leap of faith… or at least a shuffle of your feet. Let’s explore what that actually means and what it looks like. During the hardest moments of your trauma bond, you may have felt shattered, exhausted, and heartbroken, clinging to whatever semblance of a life or relationship to feign normalcy. Maintaining this trauma bond state depleted your energy, and you may have felt helpless and powerless. You replayed all those lost opportunities to do something different or break the cycle repeatedly in your mind. That’s when the shame narrative crept in. “If I was only strong enough…” “I should have done this differently…” “I could have been so much more than this…” You may have felt like it was too late to start over. Or that you didn’t have it in you, whatever that “it” is. This was a dark place, in which the harder you fought against what was happening the more you feared the abandonment, betrayal, humiliation, injustice, or rejection. It was hard to sustain hope for your future or trust in yourself when those fears wouldn’t go away.

But then something powerful happened. You reached a threshold, an impasse within yourself where the pain of staying the same became greater than the fear of changing. The journey we’ve been on has brought you to this threshold. You stand there now with new knowledge and insight about trauma, your relationships, and your life. It’s not my intent to push you blithely into the unknown. I know what I am asking can feel uneasy, especially if you’ve never been taught about this reservoir of resilience stored within your mind and body.

In the beginning of our work, the idea of transformation perhaps seemed foreign or unobtainable. I know the path toward it is not as simple as taking a leap of faith; you do not have to make some fearless, monumental move to take this step. On my own journey, I certainly didn’t. You are allowed to stand up with shaky limbs, you’re allowed to go forward with tears in your eyes and a sob in your throat, you are allowed to tremble as you walk toward the version of you that is happy, peaceful, inspired, and radiating.

Why This Book Is Different

· This book is the only trade book written by a practicing trauma-informed therapist who not only addresses ways to heal complex trauma, but also teaches readers how to cultivate positive transformation and Post-Traumatic Growth in their personal lives AND relationships.

· This is the first book that takes the shame out of the trauma bond by removing language that labels and stigmatizes, giving readers permission to fully explore their own personal role in the toxic dance from a place of self compassion, insight, and courage.

· This book is the first trade book written by a PhD trauma therapist that explains how most “toxic” emotions and behaviors are actually symptoms of underlying trauma and how, through intensive work, they can be treated.

· This is the only professionally guided self-exploration book that includes step-by-step, interactive, trauma-informed healing strategies to immediately address your own toxic tendencies from a place of self-trust and how they play out in relationships throughout your life.

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Dr. Laura Anne Copley, Ph.D. Licensed Professional Counselor in Virginia Certified Trauma Specialist

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