The Illusion of Intimacy

The illusion of intimacy

When someone shares something vulnerable online, it can create an immediate sense of closeness. We read their words and think, They understand me. We comment, they respond, and a bond can seem to form quickly. But it’s important to name what that bond actually is. Often what we’re experiencing is resonance, not relationship. It’s a moment of recognition, not a tested attachment. It’s emotional contact, not the kind of sustained, reciprocal connection that can hold us when we fall apart at 2 AM.

This isn’t a criticism of online spaces. It’s simply the truth of what a screen can and cannot hold. Real relationships, the kind that repairs attachment wounds requires more: presence, consistency, boundaries, rupture and repair, and a pattern of showing up over time. It also requires being known in ways that aren’t curated, edited, or controlled. For those of us trained to perform for connection, those who learned that closeness depended on being “safe,” pleasing, agreeable, or useful, online connection can feel familiar. Even preferable. It can feel less risky than closer, intimate relationships. But it isn’t the same as being truly known.

When support spaces create fast attachment

Support spaces, especially trauma-centered groups can intensify this illusion. There can be an immediate sense of closeness and friendship even though we do not truly know each other yet. In clinical terms, this is often a form of rapid attachment through shared vulnerability. People disclose quickly, the group reflects what we need to hear, affirms our emotions, and the nervous system may interpret that relief as proof of safety. When you come from a background where you were not believed, not validated, or emotionally punished for telling the truth, especially in high-control family systems or cultic environments, validation can land like oxygen. The mind can translate early affirmation into: This person is safe. This person loves me. This person knows me. Not because those things are necessarily true yet, but because having people who truly “get it” has been so scarce.

And that’s where trauma can quietly distort the pace of connection. The initial closeness can be real in the sense that it’s emotionally meaningful, but it may not yet be anchored in enough time, observation, or repair to support the weight we place on it.

When online spaces become reenactments

Here’s where it gets more complicated for those of us with histories of ritual abuse and mind control. We were trained in systems that exploited our need for attachment. Abusers often positioned themselves as the only source of connection, the only ones who understood us, the only ones we could trust. We were isolated from healthy relationships and made dependent on those who harmed us. When we enter online spaces, especially support groups centered on trauma, we can unknowingly recreate relational dynamics that resemble the systems that shaped us. We may find ourselves:

• Attaching quickly and intensely to people we barely know because the feeling of being understood is so regulating.

• Assigning someone the role of rescuer, authority figure, or “safe person,” giving them more emotional weight than the relationship can realistically carry.

• Feeling destabilized when someone doesn’t respond, or when a connection reveals its limits,triggering abandonment and rejection wounds.

• Competing for closeness in a group, reenacting rivalry and scarcity dynamics from abusive systems.

• Settling for surface-level connection because it feels better than nothing, even when part of us knows we need more.

• Avoiding in-person relationships because online feels safer, more controllable, and less exposing.

None of this makes you broken. It makes you human with an attachment system shaped by trauma and a brain still scanning for safety.

Triggering, rupture, and the “unsafe person” switch

Something I’ve seen repeatedly in support settings is how quickly a group can slide into reenactment when triggers aren’t handled responsibly. In a healthy relational system, triggers are only information. They signal to us that something in me needs attention. They are not proof that another person is dangerous. But in trauma communities, especially when people have a history of betrayal, coercive control, or invalidation triggers can become fused with threat. When one person gets activated, instead of pausing, regulating, and naming what’s happening internally, the nervous system can do something automatic: the other person becomes “unsafe.”
Then these relational patterns follows predictably:

• One person withdraws or avoids interaction to prevent getting triggered again.

• Another person feels confused, shamed, or publicly confronted.

• The group polarizes and people choose sides, go quiet, or leave.

• The space starts to feel like “family” again; not the healthy kind, but the kind shaped by fear, unsaid rules, and relational instability.

I’ve had this happen over and over again. In some groups, I became the person others felt safe enough to disclose to, until their trigger got activated. And rather than processing that internally or seeking repair, the feelings would get expressed publicly, sometimes in front of everyone. One by one, people started leaving, not necessarily because the space was truly unsafe, but because the group was functioning without repair, accountability, or structure.

This isn’t about blaming individuals. It’s about naming a pattern: avoidant attachment strategies, trauma responses, and unprocessed activation can turn support groups into unstable systems quickly. When we don’t learn how to tolerate emotional discomfort, we often recreate the relational world we came from: closeness that flips to threat, connection that collapses into avoidance, and community that fractures without repair.

Why structure matters any why it can feel controlling

This is why guidelines matter. Group dynamics are powerful. Without structure, past patterns often become the invisible organizer of the space. A moderator, clear expectations, and repair pathways can protect a group from becoming a reenactment. But there’s a catch: In trauma communities, even basic structure can be misread.

When a moderator sets limits, redirects a conversation, enforces boundaries, asks members to take responsibility for triggers, some people may interpret that as control, because “authority” has been associated with harm in their history. Then the old system tries to recreate itself: suspicion, projection, triangulation, splitting, withdrawal.
That’s why many peer groups function best when:

• peers take turns moderating,

• the group has shared agreements everyone consents to, and

• there is a clear process for conflict, rupture, and repair,

or, in many cases, the safest structure is a therapy-led group where containment and clinical oversight reduce the risk of reenactment. Support spaces are not automatically safe because they are “trauma-informed.” Safety is built through boundaries, responsibility, and repair.

What we actually need

The wound happened in relationship. The healing also happens in relationship, but not just any relationship. What heals attachment trauma is consistent, reciprocal, committed connection with people who show up over time. People who see the real you, not just the version you feel safe putting out there. People who stay when things get hard. People who repair after rupture. People who prove, through their behavior, that they are trustworthy. This kind of relationship is slow. It is inconvenient. It requires vulnerability that cannot be edited before you hit “post.” It asks us to be seen in ways that feel terrifying; especially when being seen was once dangerous. Fear of conflict is so scary for some that it is easier to just do what was done in the past...sweep it all under the rug.

Online connection can supplement embodied relationship, but it cannot replace it. A supportive comment cannot hold you when you are shaking. A like cannot sit with you in silence when words fail. A virtual connection cannot consistently co-regulate your nervous system the way safe, embodied presence can. We need the kind of knowing that only comes from time, proximity, and shared life that isn’t mediated by a screen.

A note on trigger responsibility

One of the healthiest things I’ve experienced in a group of survivors was in a writing workshop I facilitated and another survivor space that has really good and clear guidelines that honored trauma without letting trauma run the room. Each person was responsible for their own internal experience. If someone was activated, they could:

• turn off camera,

• step away,

• take a break,

• or leave for the day if needed,

without shaming themselves or blaming others. That model matters, because it teaches a core skill: self-regulation and self-responsibility in community. It also protects the group from “contagion dynamics,” where one person’s activation becomes everyone’s emergency and the relational system reorganizes around fear. Support groups and spaces for survivors work best when compassion and accountability exist together.

The crumbs we settle for

One of the most painful legacies of abuse is learning to settle for crumbs. When you grow up starving for connection, any scrap feels like a feast. A kind word from a stranger online can feel like love. A moment of validation can feel like being seen. A brief exchange can feel like belonging. But crumbs cannot nourish us. They keep us alive, barely, while we remain hungry.

If you find yourself filling up on online connection while avoiding the harder work of building in-person relationships, I want to gently ask: what are you protecting yourself from?
Is it the fear of being truly known?
The fear of rejection if someone sees all of you?
The fear that you are too much, too broken, too complicated for anyone to stay?
Those fears are valid. They were learned in environments where closeness was dangerous. But the only way through is through. The only way to heal attachment wounds is to risk attachment again; this time with people who are worthy of your trust.

A word about discernment

I am not saying all online connection is bad or that you should cut yourself off from communities that have supported you. What I am saying is this: pay attention to your internal landscape and be aware of why you are connecting and with whom.
Notice when you are using online connection to avoid the vulnerability of in-person relationship.
Notice when you are attaching to someone you don’t truly know and giving them power in your emotional life.
Notice when the dynamics of a space start to feel familiar in ways that echo the systems that harmed you.
Notice when triggers are being externalized and blame is replacing regulation and repair.
Notice when structure is being framed as “control” and accountability is being treated as threat. Awareness is the first step. From there, you can make choices that move you toward what you actually need.

You deserve more than crumbs

You were created for deep, abiding, reciprocal connection. Not the counterfeit version your abusers offered. Not the filtered version a screen can provide. The real thing. The kind of relationship where someone knows your name and your story and your triggers and your dreams; and chooses to stay anyway. The kind of relationship where you can fall apart and be held, not just told “I’m here for you” in a comment. The kind of relationship that proves, over and over, that connection does not have to come with a cost. You deserve that. And it exists. The screen can be a bridge. But it was never meant to be where you live.