The people that we surround ourselves with, their response to us, and how their presence around us affects us results in impacting us in varied ways. Therefore, it is important to track the unhealthy and impertinent behavior and call it out, and if needed, to pull yourself out of these situations that may become threatening or suffocating.
A toxic relationship can be extremely damaging as it is often guided by insecurity, control, and abuse. It can sprout out of a romantic one, within a family, friendship, or even between colleagues. If you constantly feel like you’re being pulled into a vicious cycle of self-doubt and guilt, yet you find yourself desperately seeking reconciliation, you might be in one such relationship. The engagement or involvement in these kinds of relationships can diminish your self-esteem and seriously take a toll on your mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
Therefore, to effectively heal from past traumatic experiences, it is important to understand the depth of harm a toxic relationship can have on your well-being. If you resonate with any of the things mentioned in the article or if an unfortunate experience has taken a toll on your day-to-day activity, you might want to consider talking to a counselor or a therapist to heal from the trauma fully.
It is pertinent to heal to strive forward in life with clarity to not fall into the vicious cycle of traumatic experiences from past relationships. In this article, we try to expand on different kinds of traumas that can surface from any relationship and offer effective methods to heal from them. Keep reading if you are considering opting for a counselor or booking a session in therapy for coping. Read till the end of the article to find out more.
How To Spot a Toxic Relationship?
It can be challenging to be able to track the toxicity in a relationship actively. Due to a repeated pattern of such behavior, we may become attuned to it and confuse it with normativity. Initially, you will try to downplay the negatives of people. It is almost like your vision is distorted by pink-tinted glasses where you have gaslighted yourself into believing that it is not as bad as you think or that you are overreacting or overanalyzing a situation. Hence it becomes all the more important to understand the major red flags to look for in any relationship and accordingly set boundaries for ourselves, which, when overstepped, is an endgame.
- The foremost parameter in a toxic relationship is that you never feel understood. There are disagreements, but a resolution never seems to be achieved. This is followed by blame game and victim playing.
- Instead of feeling energized and motivated, every encounter seems to drain you out or make you feel unhappy, forcing you to overthink and hyperfocus on the situation.
- There might be love, nevertheless, in these relationships, but the basic form of mutual respect seems to be lacking.
- If you also find the other person being hyper-focused on comparing themselves to you in every instance instead of being focused on a mutually growth-oriented relationship, chances are you are with a person who has a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). A person who reduces every achievement of the other person as a competition and always tries to one-up them will have difficulty coexisting with their partner.
Being in a toxic relationship can harm and hamper a person’s mental health. Chronic stress from exposure to such instances can cause a long-term activation of the brain’s CTRA, which can cause chronic inflammation and increase the risk of health problems like adrenal fatigue. This can further make you feel unmotivated to perform or concentrate on the most basic tasks of the day.
How Does it Impact Someone’s Well-Being?
Let’s understand closely how an unhealthy relationship can contribute to a toxic social environment, which can lead to stress, depression, anxiety, and even suicide.
The onset of depression can start with feelings of detachment or sadness. Being in an inhospitable environment for a prolonged period of time can cultivate thoughts of self-harm and make it difficult to perform even everyday chores in your daily life.
If the other person is not as invested as you are and often makes you feel unheard, unseen, or unworthy, you might want to re-evaluate things. Living in fear, emotional exhaustion, low self-esteem, codependency, and depression may eventually lead to long-term harm.
Feeling dissociated from everyone because their advice on your relationship overwhelms you might also be a signal worth considering. While constructively weighing everyone’s opinions on your life is a sane practice, numbing and cutting people off who call out the unhealthy pattern of your relationship is never a good thing. If you find yourself constantly arguing or arguing with people trying to help, it is a great possibility that you might be in a trauma bond with this person.
Common Examples
The trauma can stem from emotional, physical, or sexual abuse endured during the relationship, resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical effects.
It can also develop from emotional manipulation and narcissistic abuse. Emotional manipulation is the reason you feel alone and lost in a relationship. It can also become hard to trust yourself when someone has constantly been gaslighting you and toying with your emotions and mental health for a prolonged period.
Being exposed to problematic partners can even result in what medical professionals call developing PTSD from relationships. This happens when the abuse from the relationship leads to a trauma response. PTSD can surface problems such as trust, communication, and problem-solving. Additionally, relationship PTSD, also known as post-traumatic relationship syndrome (PTRS), is a type of PTSD related to domestic abuse from an intimate partnership.
Exposure to prolonged periods of stress can cause overstimulation of stress hormones where the victim experiences a fight, flight, or freeze response. This shifts your focus from every task, making it impossible for you to focus on anything else. The victim can also experience a repeating pattern of anxiety, nightmares, trouble concentrating, insomnia, and lethargy.
If such symptoms of trauma are impacting your mental, emotional, and physical well-being, your relationships, or other aspects of your life, the support of a mental health professional may be needed.
What is Trauma Bond?
A Trauma Bond can be defined as a connection between the abuser and the abused, which is reflective of an attachment created by repeating physical or emotional trauma with positive reinforcement. It is more common in romantic encounters but also viable in other forms of relationships as well. The notion behind the bond is forging a pattern that starts with the excessive love-bombing phase, which frizzles out soon enough, making you end up in a pattern of self-doubt and guilt. The crux of the relationship works on addiction. As the stages of this bond progress, you become addicted to the highs and lows as your body is on a constant stress high and craves dopamine. This, in turn, creates a cycle of dependency that feels a lot like a substance addiction.
Also Read
Spotting the Signs of Emotional Abuse and Ways to Cope
Emotional abuse in romantic relationships can be insidious and deeply harmful. It often starts subtly, with constant criticism, manipulation, or isolation, gradually leaving you feeling powerless and questioning your reality. Know that you deserve to be treated with...
What are the Signs and Symptoms?
Certain signs to look out for to avoid getting into a toxic relationship include:
- Love Bombing: Flooding with affection, gifts, and praise at the very beginning of the relationship. If it feels too good or soon to be true, it probably is.
- Critiquing: Slowly but surely, the criticism about the littlest things about yourself emerges. They may be drip-feeding you with negative thoughts about yourself and your life.
- Gaslighting/Controlling: Manipulation of facts, making you believe it is always your fault, or finding a way always to make you believe in their narrative. The next thing you know, you’re self-doubting everything, your self-esteem has taken a serious toll, and you find yourself worth being defined by this other person’s validation of you.
However difficult it might seem to break out of this addictive trauma bond, know that it is possible. Be easy on yourself and evaluate the ‘Hook’ – an unhealthy pattern of highs and lows you get accustomed to. It is also important to recognize the abusive behaviors you might have missed previously. Reflecting on this would be a blessing to protect yourself for the future. Eventually, clarity of thought will be regained. The lies and the addictive pattern will unfold. You must also prioritize setting boundaries and planning your future at this stage. Make mindful choices of what behavior is tolerable and which is borderline problematic.
Tips for Letting Go
The first rule to healing is letting go of the past. Addressing the lingering effects of past experiences can be challenging, especially when you have been betrayed, left without closure, or invalidated throughout the relationship. Effective and easy steps in countering the harm and embarking on the healing journey include practicing self-compassion and mindfulness. Redirecting your thoughts and emotions into self-growth while reflecting on the past trauma can be learned over time.
Here are some tips on letting go of the past:
- Acceptance: Sometimes, the response to trauma bond can result in you ruminating or obsessing as your past relationship has left you to revolve in this pattern of overanalyzing everything. Know that the memories can get overwhelming and so engaging that anything and everything can come in the way of moving on. Thus, practice ways to bring your focus into the present moment, or if you feel that your unresolved feelings need an outlet, expressing emotions in a safe place, such as in a journal, confiding in a trustworthy friend, or seeking therapy might be effective methods. Don’t try to fight or fix your feelings immediately or invalidate and belittle them. Healing is a gradual process, and processing your feelings and emotions is the foremost step toward healing.
- Accountability: Taking ownership of past actions might make you feel less hopeless about the given situation and settle the unresolved feelings of guilt, embarrassment, or shame. Taking accountability does not equate with blaming oneself but, more importantly, acknowledging and choosing to learn and mature from the past. Knowing that this is a gradual process, hurrying down the healing lane isn’t advisable. Invest in every step, and know that healing looks different for everybody. Be gentle towards yourself and allow yourself as much time as you need.
- Practice Self-Compassion: It is possible that during this process, you might have thoughts of reconciliation guided by guilt or self-esteem issues. Being compassionate towards yourself can help here. Trying to stay mindful of the present and tracing your growth will shift your focus from that traumatic past and redirect your focus toward reality. Practicing self-compassion is also proven to help you stop rumination.
When your thoughts start to become critical, try replacing them with more forgiving alternatives. Change your self-talk and stop villainizing any of the parties involved. Absolve yourself and the person involved from all emotions and prioritize rationalizing the thoughts and experiences. Maintaining a journal to jot down the feelings might be a great way to navigate through this stage. - Regaining Control: Having any sort of emotion still attached to the past, be it anger, aggression, or sadness, is a sign of unresolved anger, betrayal, and resentment. These especially occur in the aftermath of trauma as an associated feature of PTSD. But they can be resolved by adopting new ways of resorting to art, music, or other creative hobbies. This is the time to take up a new hobby, start exercising or connect with things that make you feel excited about the future. Therefore, set new goals for yourself during this stage. Redirecting your old patterns into cultivating new habits which make you feel better about yourself can also be helpful.
Should You Seek Professional Help?
The route to recovery looks different for everyone. But if letting go of the past is proving challenging and negative thoughts and emotions continue to pervade for weeks or months, it might be best to try and seek professional aid.
If you’re feeling trapped in the structures of power, control, and cyclical abuse, even after the relationship is over, know that these patterns can be unlearned with appropriate measures and therapy catering to your specific needs. To understand your trigger points, it is important to process each emotion with complexity. Therefore, in this case, reaching out to a mental health professional is paramount to understanding the problems faced in your relationship.
Get Started With a Trusted Provider on DocVita Today
A licensed mental health professional can allow for continued support. Even if you’ve successfully come out of a toxic relationship, further assistance may be required to set healthy boundaries and develop effective communication skills for future relationships.
At DocVita, you can benefit from trauma-informed therapies with the help of a licensed clinical professional. This can help you break off that unhealthy yet hardwired cycle of a trauma bond. The techniques learned in therapy can also help target unhelpful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that might cause recurring anxiety.
Know that there are people readily available to help you successfully come out of it. Consider connecting with a counselor or a therapist through DocVita today to start on your journey of healing.