Do you know what trauma bonding actually means?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At a recent gathering, someone said they had “trauma bonded" with another person over the challenges of working in similar roles—not an accurate use of the word. In casual conversations, trauma bonding is often used to describe forming a close relationship with someone who has experienced similar problems.

However, in psychological terms, trauma bonding refers to a connection that forms between an individual and their abuser due to a cycle of abuse interspersed with moments of kindness and affection. This emotional confusion makes it difficult for the victim to leave the relationship. The rise of therapyspeak—using psychology jargon in everyday conversation—has reduced complex concepts to oversimplified buzzwords, fuelling their widespread misuse.

This trend not only trivialises serious mental health issues but also gives people the licence to use terms like “bipolar," “schizo" and “retard" to label others callously. Trauma bonding is another addition to a growing list of mental health terms that are often used out of context or with little understanding. If “trauma bonding" is so easily misinterpreted, perhaps we need a new term to clarify its meaning.

Language should evolve, after all. I asked a few mental health professionals if they could hypothetically replace “trauma bonding" with a clearer term, what would it be? Anindita Chatterjee, a Delhi-based counselling psychologist, offers the term “abuse-driven attachment". “Trauma bonding in adult relationships often stems from attachment injury experienced in childhood within the parent-child connection," she says.