John-Michael discusses male trauma bonding, which is often overlooked and under-researched in our society. He talks about his personal experience where he was a victim of abuse by his coach, who slowly gained his trust and developed a relationship with him. John-Michael felt confused and conflicted because he felt safe with his abuser, but also knew that the relationship was not genuine. He warns that victims of abuse may feel attraction or closeness to their abuser, which can lead them to equate abuse with love. He urges people to seek help and talk to someone if they feel they are being abused or in a situation that doesn't feel right.
I want to talk to you about male trauma bonding now this is something that is very rarely talked about or researched a lot of times the research is about a female victim and a male abuser we've also seen connections with the Stockholm syndrome where the person has been kidnapped and then they find attraction or um empathy towards the the the person who kidnapped them and they they find a way to Bond each other and yet our society doesn't want to talk about male victims bonding with male survivors so that's why any of the things I think we don't talk about it and yet it happens it happens all the time and one of the things that in my story is that I was dealing with all these people who were trafficking me this group of professionals and all of a sudden there's my coach who came up to me one day and said that he knew what was going on and that he could help me and that I could trust him and I could share anything that was going on because he had saw that my mind wasn't constantly there all the time because I was dealing with trying to balance this whole understanding and trying to grasp what was happening to me and so he he started to slowly become closer to me and share with me at first he appeared like a big brother he he was attractive and he was um well liked everyone adored him and so when I found out that he was interested in helping me I slowly started to find my way migrating towards him and as things went on things started to get a little bit more closer he would touch me in public he would hug me everything he came about how excited he was to be around me and things slowly started to develop and then he started to take me to overnight trips to the university to practice with the University team and we had to you know crash out together on someone's apartment living room floor or something like that and that's when things started to move into the abuse section and I was confused and and freaked out but yet I also felt safe with him he was a safe area and when all this other turmoil is going on I I created this fondness towards him and so what in the reaction is and what the results are I refuse to say anything about him I would not talk about him in that sense and so I was basically protecting him because I thought that we had this connection and in reality we did not and um as things went on I realized that it was not a real relationship and that created even more confusion for a teenage mind that I was dealing with because I was dealing with my own sexual orientation at the same time so if you find yourself in a situation one of the things that I think people need to look for if they are being abused is am I feeling attraction or am I feeling a closeness to this person we see this happen a lot in domestic violence where the the wife stays with the husband because she thinks she loves him and what happens is we started equating abuse with love and that is something that we have to be very careful with and if you feel you are being abused or anything that you feel like it's not right because inside I think you really know you need to find help you need to reach out to people there are ways that you can find there are 1 800 numbers to call you can do it anonymously if there's a girlfriend or a friend that you know that you could talk to start talking about it and see what their reaction is because I'll tell you if it's something not correct they'll let you know
