Recovering Your Life After A Toxic Relationship

Following last week’s show about shame, Cinthia talked today about a life circumstance that can cause a significant amount of shame: being or having been in a toxic relationship.  People are imperfect, so our relationships are bound to be the same.  Some relationships, however, are more than imperfect – they are dangerous to your physical and/or emotional health.  Toxic relationships are often difficult to recognize at first, but, like other kinds of toxicity, they can wear away at us, making us progressively more stressed, isolated, confused, afraid, and angry.  Toxic relationships tear constantly at self-esteem and can involve abuse, gaslighting/narcissism, and exhaustion from constantly trying to avoid another person’s negative reactions.  Toxic relationships can actually harm your physical health because they cause chronic stress, which can cause long-term activation of the brain’s CTRA, contributing to chronic inflammation and potentially leading to health problems like adrenal fatigue.  Toxic relationships have been shown to correlate with increases in specific health problems.  Other good relationships in your life can help mitigate those risks somewhat, but that does not mean the negative relationship is not still affecting you.  People who have experienced significant abuse may have a particularly hard time acknowledging what happened or is happening because they do not want to feel weaker than they already do.

So how do you know you are in a toxic relationship?  Look at what has changed since you entered the relationship.  Toxic relationships produce shame, and the evidence of shame includes losing your zest for life, feeling confused a lot of the time, no longer trusting yourself, fearing vulnerability, being extremely angry, and fearing that people will hear things about you and believe the other person instead of you.  (It is possible to experience some of these symptoms from other causes.  For example, if you have experienced another trauma recently or have struggled with these same symptoms throughout your life, the relationship may not be primarily to blame.)  Consider whether, when you are with the person or when you have been around them, you experience any of the following more than half the time: feeling physically or emotionally drained of energy; feeling bad about yourself; sensing that you are always giving and never receiving from the person; a sense of being shunned or feeling like an unaccepted outsider; isolation from friends, family, and others who support you, particularly because the other person discourages or forbids your interactions with them; fear and a sense of “walking on eggshells” to try to keep the other person from getting upset; a sense of being emotionally or physically unsafe or having been injured by the person.  (If you have been injured by the person, this is very, very significant and should not be ignored.)

So what can you do when you find that you are in a toxic relationship?  You have four options.  First, you can accept it and be at peace with it as it is.  This reduces the stress of trying to change it or evaluate it.  This approach can be helpful in relationships where intimacy is not a goal (e.g., some relatives or friends) and you are not in danger.  Secondly, you can try to change the relationship by setting boundaries, recognizing that you cannot make anyone change except yourself.  The level of toxicity in the relationship will largely determine whether these boundaries are respected, and, if they are constantly broken after being communicated, you know that you are in a very toxic situation.  If you are in a situation where setting any kind of boundary with the other person is actually dangerous, recognize that this is a significant red flag.  Thirdly, you can leave the relationship.  Recognize that you cannot control anyone but yourself, that no amount of boundaries or acceptance can “fix” the other person or make him/her love you and treat you well.  You may decide that you are unwilling to continue the pattern.  If you find that you are willing to tolerate very toxic patterns on an ongoing basis, at some point you may need to see a therapist to help you figure out why this is the case.  The fourth option is to continue things as they are but without coming to peace – in other words, just keep feeling miserable.  While there are lots of reasons people may choose to stay in troubled relationships and it can be dangerous to judge others for doing so since there can be lots of factors others do not understand, Cinthia strongly discouraged simply staying miserable and encouraged looking back at the first three options to see if one might be worth pursuing.

So how do you recover your life after having been in a toxic relationship?  First, resist the shame.  You must believe that you did not deserve the treatment you received.  No one deserves to be abused.  It is normal after such a relationship to think that there must be something you did to cause it and make it all go wrong, something you may be able to fix about yourself that made the person treat you abusively.  But this is not the case, and you must reinforce this to your own brain again and again.  Abusive relationships that are not physically abusive can involve especially difficult recovery because this kind of abuser chooses relational partners who are willing to take feedback, which leads the partner to consider everything the abusers says and think that maybe the abuser is right (e.g., that the partner is the problem, etc.).

Second, you must validate having been in a toxic relationship.  Nobody wants to admit having been in a toxic relationship; we may think it shameful that we got into the relationship, stayed in the relationship, or somehow (we think) caused the person to become abusive toward us.  Remind yourself that humans naturally want relationships, give people chances, and want to succeed with them.  Toxic relationships are very stealthy; as with arsenic poisoning, you may get gradually sicker without knowing why, not suspecting that the relationship is so unhealthy until you are very hurt.

Third, resist the urge to try to figure out why you were treated the way you were treated.  It is normal to want to figure it out, think the shame away, and make sure that it will never happen again.  But even helping professionals are unable to diagnose those who are close to them, like friends and family.  Furthermore, you may have trouble understanding the way a toxic person thinks because you do not think that way, and that is a good thing.  Do not try to figure out why the person did what he or she did.  You will never have enough information to make it stop hurting with logic. 

Fourth, be careful about judging either yourself or the other person who was involved in the relationship.  Allow yourself to be appalled at his or her behavior, but do not go down to his or her level.  Don’t own it; don’t wear it.  Do not make excuses for the other person, but do not curse them, either—it does not help the pain but does make you more like the offender.  Do not fall into the trap of thinking you have to destroy the other person’s reputation to justify yourself.  You do not have to justify yourself; besides, your family and friends may already know more than you think since they have been watching the relationship, perhaps without knowing how to help.  Also, be careful about interactions with your ex.  The less you press a toxic offender, the better; the offender will only use your words and decisions against you and make you look bad, no matter what you do.  Be careful, too, about trying to help malevolent people; they will go lower than you expect. 

Fifth, integrate detox practices to help detoxify your own psyche.  These can include trauma therapy, talking to God about your feelings, reading His Word, and reminding yourself that Jesus died for you, an immense indicator of your own worth.  Understand that some of this is a spiritual issue.  This level of rejection and ostracism do not come from heaven but from hell.  Humans are valuable, no matter how bad they are.  Feeling worthless is not from God or from other healthy humans.  Making mistakes is not necessarily toxic.  We are imperfect and can be chaotic.  Toxicity takes away energy.  Toxic relationships are shaming, giving the message that you are a bad person rather than that you have simply done bad things.  Choose not to wear the shame.  A toxic person can make the same mistakes as a healthier person, but the toxic person does not take responsibility and actually feels empowered by harming others.  He or she is hard to confront because he or she is so adept at tearing down those who confront them.  Do not make excuses for this.  Deal with yourself first by working on mindfulness.  Talk to God about your fears, sense of being trapped, worries that you are just over-sensitive, etc.  Care for yourself, and recognize that you belong to God.  God wants you to care for the one He loves – you.  Become more present.  Practice not rehashing everything in your mind all the time.  Learn perspective about your own actions so the person cannot make you afraid by reminding you of your mistakes, as if you are going to “get in trouble.”  Consider therapy and/or other helpful relationships.  Practice setting appropriate boundaries.  Seek out healthy people, and build friendships with them; your health depends on it. 

If you are being toxic, get help.  This is not the person God has called you to be.