Intro [0:00]
Hello my dears! My name is Johanna, and I welcome you to the Johanna Draconis - The Deconstruction Of C-PTSD podcast.
In this episode we will talk about why it is so hard to leave someone - even if they threaten our wellbeing - or to cut them out of our lives. While the decision is logically so easy to make, it can be hard to understand why we struggle so much with it.
So let us talk about it.

Prelude [0:28]
Have you ever heard someone ask “Why didn’t you just leave?” be it to someone else or yourself? Or maybe you are wondering, why you couldn’t and can’t just leave. Even now when all is in the open there is the struggle. Or why do we return to them?
Despite our best efforts to walk away - we keep getting drawn back to them. Even when there is no love left. It is for most difficult to understand and even harder to explain. It is easy to wonder if you are wrong - that you should be together after all.
All of this is all to familiar to me and it is so easy to get lost in it all. Those emotions are some of the strongest you can find - and strongly interconnected with so many things. The deeper the connection the harder it is to remove it.
Every contact and every person shapes us - becomes a part of us - be is because we don’t want to be like them or we do want to.. .and everything in between. They don’t determine who we are but they do affect us - in one way or the other.
We first talk about how relationships are formed, then why are we being drawn back in and then why cutting relationships is hard.

How relationship are formed [1:54]
Now I think most of you know that we form a relationship when we connect with people - and I mean this literally. Every connection we have with someone, an eye contact, a standing together in line, looking at a picture, driving the same path for a while and so on.
Of course the stronger the moment the stronger the relationship is affected. For example - saving a life together is an extremely strong connecting moment. Each of these connections strengthen the bond.
You could imagine them like strings being added and forming a rope.
And while the strings over time fade - usually the rope remains in a very weakened state available. As long we interact with someone - we keep adding strings to this rope. Of course discourse and fights can pull on the rope and rip a few strings - or even destroy it entirely.
We need those ropes for stability in our lives - we are social beings after all. Doesn’t mean more ropes are better, one good one beats tons of weak ones. These ropes take time, effort and energy to form - so they are limited by nature.

Why we are being drawn back in [3:12]
Which leads us to the point of why we are being drawn back in - it is the stability and the presence of the rope we long for. Sometimes more, but we get to that in a moment. Like I said these ropes are giving us stability and strength in life. Something we can hold on to.
As many of you learned most likely when hitting hard times. So we seek them out especially in uncertain times to gives as assurance and comfort, that when the worst comes to pass - we will have something to hold on to and not just fall into the depths.
That are the moments when the ropes integrity and strength is truly tested - the true strength and reliability of your relationship with someone. And then there are abusive relationships - which is not surprisingly a complicated situation and mostly a topic on its own.
But, to shortly summarize, the abusive relationship leaves us especially vulnerable and sensitive and usually we lost all other forms of stability and comfort. So when we are hit with a drastically changed situation, new home, new people and so on - we get hit HARD.
And with us being weak and not firmly standing on the ground, the brain reevaluates the potential thread of the abusive relationship and we think that maybe we are better off back at it. This is done on purpose and is exactly why they do the things they do.

How cutting relationships is hard [4:52]
Because cutting a relationship is extremely hard, difficult and usually painful. Because as you might have suspected - we need to cut every string that connected you - until there is nothing left. Which hurts, as these strings are part of us and who we are.
Like said before, we are shaped by the relationships and connections in our lives. But how is it so hard? It is easiest to completely avoid anything that has to do with that person, then the rope will fade until it is relatively easy to remove it.
But the brain really tries to maintain these relationships - because back then that was necessary for survival. But sometimes you can’t just ignore that person - for example when there is a connection with a trauma.
Then as long the trauma exists - so long you will feel a bond and keep reactivating the trauma. I often went through the 5 stages of grieving with each of them getting removed. But how to cut someone goes beyond this episode - it likely will be the next.

Outro [6:08]
That was it for todays episode, I hope you found it helpful. Hope you are safe and well. And as always, if you have any questions or feedback and the like, please let me know at contactme@johannadraconis.com.
More information and transcript you can find as usually under johannadraconis.com and links are in the description.
I hope to see you next time. Watch yourselves and have a wonderful time.