This is how your toxic relationships have changed you
Bad relationships don’t just damage our trust. They change the way we see ourselves and the world around us.
by: E.B. Johnson
Toxic relationships change us in more ways than one. Being damaged by a toxic partner teaches us that it isn’t safe to trust, but it also instills us with a number of other lessons too. When you are touched by toxic and all-consuming relationships that blow your world apart, you are left standing in the rubble of self-loathing, paranoia, and avoidance. Are you ready to get yourself back on track? You have to re-define what you want from love and commitment so you can pursue it with compassion and intention.
Toxic relationships change everything.
Have you finally come out on the other side of a dark and damaging relationship? Did your partner abuse you? Dismiss you? Or gaslight you right into a devastating heartbreak? Now is the time to get yourself back, but that’s hard in the wake of a toxic relationship. When we fall for toxic people, everything changes. Not only do we lose trust in others, but we lose trust in self too, and our ability to create relationships that are rewarding.
Toxic relationships change the way we see ourselves in the world.
Never underestimate the damage that has been done to you by the toxic relationships of your past. Not only do these relationships change the way in which your brain functions, they leave you forever with the scars of avoidance, paranoia, and self-loathing. Do you want to get your life back on track? Do you want to learn how to love and trust again? Pick up the pieces and find yourself again by leaning in to your self-confidence, elevating your environment, and setting standards and boundaries worth sticking up for.
How your toxic relationships have changed you.
Are you someone who has survived a handful of toxic relationships? Have you been-there-and-done-that when it comes to controlling or unavailable partners? When we build a toxic relationship, it changes us in so many ways. Not only does it ruin our trust in others, it ruins our trust in self and creates an overwhelming sense of paranoia and doom.
Lack of trust
Toxic relationships completely erode our sense of trust — both in ourselves and in our future partners, too. It’s understandable. Picking someone who hurts you can cause you to doubt your ability to find love at all. Meanwhile, you also look to every future relationship with suspicion and unease. Lack of trust is toxic, but it’s one of the most common ways we are shaped by our bad relationships.
Avoiding intimacy
Do you avoid true intimacy? Is it hard for you to get close to others, and even harder to pull down the walls and open up? Intimacy is a crucial part of any long-term relationships, and that doesn’t just mean sexual intimacy. To be intimate with our partner is to be vulnerable; it’s to share those parts of ourselves we don’t feel safe sharing with others. Avoiding this intimacy leads to gaping chasms in our partnerships that are hard to fill again.
Sharp cynicism
Have you become the sharpest cynic in the knife drawer? Cynicism is another common result of a long history of toxic and traumatic relationships. Having such frequent experience with failure, it becomes easy to expect that same failure at every future turn. This cynicism gets us nowhere, though. To build loving and lasting partnerships, we have to be able to see the bright side from time-to-time.
Overwhelming doom
How do you feel when you think about relationships? Or even the relationship you’re in? Do you feel happy when you think about romantic love? Or does it feel you with an overwhelming sense of doom? This is just one more way that toxic relationships change us. Becoming accustomed to being hurt, we center pain as the focus of our reality. This creates an overwhelming sense of doom that follows us throughout out personal lives.
Endless paranoia
Just as we lose trust in the wake of a toxic relationship, we can also find ourselves bottomed-out with paranoia. Doubting ourselves, and doubting the intentions of everyone else around us, we begin to see pain hiding in every single shadow. This paranoia isn’t healthy, and it keeps us from opening up to the next person — even when they’re the right one.
Self-loathing
Perhaps the biggest way our traumatic and toxic relationships change us is through self-loathing. Many people exit their bad partnerships and immediately internalize all the blame for that partnership’s failure. This leads to a hatred of self and a belief that you alone are the one that’s flawed with it comes to love. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our relationships fail because we choose the wrong people and settle for their poor behaviors. All of this can change, though.
The best ways to pull yourself back together.
Surviving the toxic relationship is only a first step. Once you’ve come out on the other side, you have to pull yourself up and pull yourself back together. This is a slow process, and one that requires us to refocus on ourselves and the way in which we see our relationships. You need to form a clear picture of what you want and then rebuild around that image. Getting there requires we act on our truest intentions mindfully.
1. Get a grip on you
There’s no point in chasing another relationship until you know how you want to move forward in love. Like it or not, this can’t happen until you spend some time on your own and get a grip of what you really want from life and love. You need to have a clear vision of what a good relationship looks like to you and committed to getting it for yourself. Visualization is a great way to do this, but it isn’t a process that can be rushed.
Step outside of your relationship rut and take some time to focus on yourself and what you really want from your relationships. What did you settle for in the past? What do you really expect from your partner in future? The clearer a vision you create, the easier it becomes to act on.
Before you can create better relationships with better partners, you need to know what those relationships look like for you. Stop stumbling through the store with no idea what you want to buy. Make yourself a list and stop settling for the generic substitutes that slow you down and upset the journey you’re on. Instead of worrying about the needs of others. You need to spend some time looking inward and getting clear on what matters to you in life and love.
2. Invest in your self-esteem
Toxic relationships destroy our self-esteem and separate us from our core sense of authenticity and strength. In order for us to get back on the right track in love, we have to invest in rebuilding our self-confidence. This is the armor which protects our happiness and our sense of security. How much time have you put into loving yourself and your inner aspects lately? As long as you keep hating yourself, you’ll attract partners that hate you too.
Low self-esteem is what leads us down the rabbit hole of toxic relationships and raised self-esteem is what gets us out of it. We don’t settle for sub-par relationships when we love ourselves. We fight for what we want and we demand respect (because that’s what we do for people we love).
Rather than trying to work out what you’re doing wrong in terms of others, look inward. How are you mis-treating yourself? It’s time to fall in love with all your strengths and all your weaknesses. It’s time to see your insecurities as pieces of the beautiful package that you are. We are all unique and we all have different flaws and skills to offer the world. Embrace these parts of yourself and find a way to fall in love with your physical body too.
3. Set some standards
We all need standards when it comes to relationships. That’s not selfish, it’s just a fact. There are certain things we all want from a long-term partner, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is hiding these things and then expecting the partner you pick to mold to them. You need to set your standards and be upfront with them. What really matters to you in a partnership and what do you want to feel like? Some things can’t be compromised and they shouldn’t be.
Re-think the standards you’re setting for your relationships. Do you allow your partners to take advantage of you? Are you someone who proves (early on) that they are the kind of person who sacrifices it all for the people that you love?
Set better standards for yourself and others. You shouldn’t have to give yourself away to be loved by someone. Stand by that. Don’t allow partners to walk all over you and don’t ever open the door on someone who shows you a hint of disrespect. Everyone has lines that shouldn’t be crossed. That’s a healthy thing. Don’t ever settle for someone who habitually crosses the line. You’re setting yourself up for a toxic and unpleasant disaster.
4. Elevate your social circles
Look around at your environment? Would you say you’ve put yourself in an environment that encourages love and support? Are you surrounded with people who want the best for you? People who could introduce you to the kind of partner that you really want to meet? Our environments and our social circles are a piece of who we are and prove to the world who we want to be (and be with).
We are a reflection of who we surround ourselves with, and our partners follow suit. Look at your history of toxic partners. Did you those people come from toxic environments you allowed yourself to become lost in? Did they follow you like shadows from your darkest and lowest moments?
By elevating our social circles and our environments, we can attract a higher caliber of partner and come to see ourselves in a better light. It’s a win-win situation. Stop settling for the lowest common denominator in every aspect of your life. Increase your self-esteem and lift yourself up so that you have the confidence to pursue relationships that actually make sense.
5. Re-think your connection
Too many people prioritize their romantic relationships as the most important thing in their lives, and this just isn’t true. While long-term intimacy can certainly be a part of your happiness journey, it’s not the sole reason you exist on this planet. By re-thinking the way you see connection and relationships, you can empower yourself to build more fair partnerships that make sense for you (and your partner).
It’s time for you to rethink the way you see connection and how you prioritize yourself within relationships. Romantic love is not the end-all and be-all in life. You will not cease to exist without it. Your life can still be complete without it.
Embracing this helps us to see our relationships in an entirely different light. Rather than making them the subject of our happiness puzzle, they become just another piece. Partner-to-partner love is a building block — an accessory — to the overall look we are trying to build. Rethinking our connections is powerful and allows us to manifest relationships that are more balanced and fair in their focus and their practice.
Putting it all together…
Toxic relationships don’t just change the way we see our future relationships — they change the way we see ourselves as well. Stumbling out of the other side of the darkness, we can find ourselves trapped in patterns of self-loathing and self-sabotage. Rather than living forever in perpetual doom, paranoia, and unease, elevate yourself, your social circles, and how you approach connection and relationships.
Get a grip on yourself. Look at your past relationships and compare it to the future that you want. What have you been settling for? What do you really want? Invest in re-building your self-esteem and find your confidence again. With this confidence to hand, you can start setting some standards and boundaries to protect your needs and your wellbeing. Better yet, you can stand up for them and yourself. Elevate your social circles and surround yourself with people who want to see you do well and live well. These people will attract positivity into our lives and encourage us to see the best in ourselves. Use that to your advantage and use it to come back from the brink of your toxic relationships.
- Harrison, J., & Dixon, M. (2019). Narcissist Abuse Recovery: The Ultimate Guide for How to Understand, Cope, and Move on from Narcissism in Toxic Relationships. Pardi Publishing.
