Why It’s So Hard to Move On from a Toxic Relationship: Trauma Bonds, Attachment, and the Nervous System

Chloë Bean, LMFT is a licensed somatic trauma therapist based in Los Angeles, specializing in anxiety, burnout, trauma, and nervous system healing for high-achieving women. Her work integrates somatic therapy, EMDR, and IFS to support lasting regulation, resilience, and relational healing.

Why You Can’t Move On from a Toxic Relationship, Even When You Know It Hurt You

When a toxic relationship ends, the emotional attachment does not disappear just because you understand it was unhealthy. This is because toxic relationships often create trauma bonds, which form through cycles of emotional closeness, withdrawal, conflict, and repair. These patterns train the nervous system to associate intensity with connection and unpredictability with safety. Even after the relationship ends, the body may continue to seek the familiar emotional highs and lows, making it feel impossible to move on despite clear intellectual awareness that the relationship caused harm.

The Hidden Link Between Toxic Relationships and Childhood Trauma

Maybe you grew up with emotionally unavailable parents/caregivers, inconsistent love, or you had to take care of everyone around you in order to feel some safe and in control. Your nervous system might be operating from a belief that love involves “chaos, inconsistency, or over-functioning”.

Toxic relationships often trigger these old wounds. This is an opportunity for growth — it’s about healing the parts of you that still long to be taken care of.

From a trauma-informed lens, rumination isn’t just “overthinking.” It’s a survival response. It’s your system trying to still get your needs met even if this way of operating is not working, it is all it knows. It is working so hard to understand a very chaotic situation.

Why Your Brain Won’t Stop Thinking About Them

From an IFS (Internal Family Systems) perspective, the part of you ruminating is working overtime to protect a more vulnerable part — maybe the part that still feels unlovable, abandoned, or unworthy of being taken care of.

From a Somatic Experiencing lens, this rumination may be a sign that your nervous system is stuck in a survival freeze, flight, or fight state — unable to complete the stress response cycle in order to feel safe.

And in EMDR therapy, we see how certain memories — especially confusing or traumatic ones — don’t get processed correctly by the brain, causing intrusive thoughts and stuck feelings. The narrative continues to play over and over again, and it can feel impossible to experience anything else.

In other words, your mind isn’t malfunctioning. These are healthy responses to an unhealthy situation. Your body and brain are actually doing their best to help you survive.

So How Do You Actually Start to Heal?

Start by acknowledging the part of you that’s ruminating — not as a problem, but as a protector. You might sense how it feels in your body when this one is present. You can try connecting with it by saying:
“I hear you. I know you're struggling and you are working so hard to try to help. What do you need right now?”

Come back to your body. Try this simple grounding practice:
Place one hand on your chest, one on your belly. Inhale slowly for 4 counts, exhale for 6. Feel where your body meets the steady surface beneath you. You’re here. You’re alive.

Limit contact with your ex’s social media, and notice which “parts” get activated when your ex pops into your mind. Do they feel young? Panicked? Try to meet them with curiosity, not shame.

Reclaim your rhythm. What rituals can you return to that connect you back to you? If it feels hard to remember how things felt before, try seeing this as the beginning of your new story. What feels nurturing? What do you want to include in your life moving forward? Is it movement, music, art, nature, new friendships, or therapy?

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

Somatic Trauma Therapy can offer the safety and structure your system needs in order to move from survival mode to deep healing and thriving. Whether you’re navigating a breakup, healing from a toxic dynamic, or stuck in overthinking patterns, I offer weekly therapy sessions and one-time deeper healing intensives to help you reconnect with yourself.

Or start with weekly somatic therapy sessions

You’re not too much. You’re not too sensitive.
You’re starting to heal from what happened — and becoming the version of you that no longer settles for survival.

P.S. A book I often recommend to high-achieving and high-functioning anxious women navigating heartbreak and self-worth struggles is Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. It breaks down attachment styles in relationships and helps you understand why you stay — and how to choose differently next time.

Or, Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood is a classic that explores the link between childhood wounding and toxic patterns in love.

You are not weak for still feeling attached. Your nervous system learned this pattern for a reason, and it can learn something new.

You are not weak for still feeling attached. Nothing about this means you failed or stayed too long. Your nervous system learned this pattern because it was trying to keep you safe.

If you are starting to notice how hard it has been to let go, or how your body still feels pulled back even when your mind knows better, you are not alone. This kind of attachment can be gently understood and slowly unwound with the right support.

If it feels helpful, you are welcome to reach out and see if working together feels like a good next step. I offer trauma-informed, somatic therapy for relationship trauma, attachment wounds, and anxiety in West Los Angeles and online throughout California.