Recovering from a Toxic Relationship: Taking Back Control Of Me

I left a decade long toxic relationship six years ago, and whilst walking away was a massive step towards regaining control of myself, I still wasn’t anywhere close to being fully me again.

I’d thought regaining control was just about leaving and in many ways it was. But it was also about processing the trauma, healing, learning to forgive myself and finding self-love. If you are on that journey, good for you!

Here’s a few things I’ve learned about redirecting self-shame and taking steps forward to rebuild the relationship with you again.

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“If you walked away from a toxic, negative, abusive, one-sided, dead-end, low vibrational relationship or friendship – you won.”

— Lalah Delia , Writer

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My Toxic Relationship – How it all began

In a report funded by the Oak Foundation to undertake research of psychological violence, they ascertained that ‘at the beginning of their relationships, 96% of survivors said their partner was charming and affectionate’ and ‘93% said they expressed love for them very quickly’. Abusive behaviour is interspersed with warmth and kindness, slowly desensitising the victim to the behaviour.

I’ve been here. They showered me with affection, said all the right things and made me feel special. I jumped in head first because I believed I knew that person and had faith the relationship was one worth investing in. I was really happy in the beginning. Which is why as the relationship progressed to emotionally abusive, I was unprepared. The changes were so far removed from what I had experienced at the beginning of the relationship.

I kept hoping for things to go back to what they’d once been. Over-egging the good times as they gave me glimmers of hope for that return to the normality I had entered into, and ignoring the bad which had quickly become my norm. It was so hard to understand and accept that the person I had fallen in love with didn’t exist anymore.

Toxic relationships don’t always begin that way. More often than not they begin with a façade to reel you in.

No-one enters a relationship thinking it will be anything other than blissful happiness

Relationships can bring so much joy but unfortunately I learned that they can just as easily bring you a lot of pain.

A toxic relationship affects all aspects of life. Experiencing psychological abuse can stunt personal growth and change you. Who I was prior to and who I became throughout that relationship were so desperately at odds with one another. And the trouble is, psychological abuse can be one of the hardest forms of abuse to determine when experiencing it.

I spent a lot of time looking back at that situation and feeling shame about how long I spent there. So if you’re reflecting back and experiencing the same, go easy on yourself. Because no-one enters a relationship thinking it will be anything other than blissful happiness, which is why it is so hard to accept when it brings us the exact opposite.

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“There are people who bring you down by just being them. They need not do anything.”

— Malebo Sephodi , Author

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My self-directed blame didn’t do anything other than keep me in the past

I couldn’t change what had happened, and I didn’t want to let it define me or my future. Of course it’s hard to forgive myself for not seeing what the relationship would become. It’s hard to accept that I stayed because I hoped for it to be better and it never was. But nothing positive would come from punishing myself for a bad decision.

Eventually I had walked away, and there wasn’t any point in doing that if I was going to keep living in the past. I could learn from it and make sure that my future came with better wisdom of how to avoid a toxic relationship. Recognise how and why that relationship was toxic, and try not to make those same choices again.

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“May you reach that level within, where you no longer allow your past or people with toxic intentions to negatively affect or condition you.”

— Lalah Delia, Writer

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Rebuilding my relationship with me

I’d spent a period of my life concentrating on someone else, consumed by how to keep them happy and still never achieving that. But now, now was all about me. It was time to recover, regain control and rebuild my relationship with me. It was time for some self-care.

And not just the emotional kind in replacing self-blame with a little self-love. But the physical kind too; healthy actions towards rebuilding and protecting that newfound sense of self. Being a little selfish, concentrating on my own wants and needs, making sure I had good people in my social circle. Everything I did had myself as the priority.

Toxic relationships are traumatic

In fact, that’s a massive fucking understatement. But whilst the trauma can have a lasting impact, so too can healing.

I went about reigniting my passions, exploring my freedom and making time for reflection and self-care. Because I wanted to really understand what I wanted from life. I wanted to remind myself who I was and find out who I was going to be now I was untangled from them.

It was time to invest in a healthy relationship and this one was with myself. And I can tell you that it’s truly cathartic to do all the things you’ve wanted to do for years but haven’t been able too because of a toxic relationship. Whether that’s visiting places you didn’t get to go, seeing people you weren’t able to spend time with, wearing what you like or simply living a life without fear and anxiousness caused by another person’s presence.

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True self-care is not bath salts and chocolate cake, it’s making the choice to build a life you don’t need to escape from.”

— Brianna West, Writer

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Sharing with those who will support

One of the key signs of a toxic relationship is when a partner creates a barrier between a person and their loved ones. Control centres on isolation, someone who wants control will do everything they can to make a person more dependent on them.

I don’t know about anyone else who’s been through this, but for me it led to pretending that my relationship was okay from the outside, leading to me also doing this from the inside too. I minimised the issues and worked hard to convince myself that everything was okay. Telling myself that the relationship was normal. Nothing to see here folks, honestly.

But it also made it so goddamn hard to finally tell the truth of what my relationship had been when it ended

Talking about what I’d been through with friends and family felt so unnatural after so long hiding everything. And I even wondered whether people would believe me.

However sharing with those I trusted, ones who would listen and support me, that was another step in the self-rebuild journey. Because whilst it was difficult to over-ride the feeling that I shouldn’t or couldn’t speak about the psychological abuse I’d experienced, it actually became this huge step in overcoming and helping me get rid of that feeling of isolation.

I reclaimed a part of me I’d lost in doing it. The ability truly be myself unfiltered and share whatever I wanted to share, with no sense of fear holding me back. It was freeing to be totally honest about what I’d gone through.

Embracing the new me

It wasn’t entirely an new me, because a lot of the aftermath was about remembering the old me. But reclaiming who I had been before that toxic relationship was just as celebration worthy.

Because for so very long I hadn’t liked who I had become. Yet now there was excitement for the present and also the future. It no longer looked bleak but bright and full of so much promise. And every day was another step forwards. No longer stuck, struggling, avoiding nor making myself so very small and in lots of ways, invisible.

As I embraced the new me I stood taller, walked and talked more confidently, as I realised how able I was.

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“Let go out of the harsh self-judgement, and start replacing those with loving thoughts about yourself. Learn to be kind to yourself, and your outside world will change as well.”

— Efrat Cybulkiewicz, Painter & Photographer

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Nothing about my self-rebuild journey has been easy or straightforward

I still occasionally feel a flash of anger at time lost in that toxic relationship, but I think that’s natural after becoming whole again. And I know deep down that self-directional anger serves no purpose. You can’t change the past, only learn from it.

Healing has been a lot about learning to be kind and gentle to myself, not an unchallenging task when you’ve had someone else chastising you for so long that blame and guilt feels as if it ought to be part and parcel of your existence. But I realised that I wasn’t required to do it to myself and no-one else was required to do it for me either.

My revenge was taking back control of me

I took back control by forgiving myself for literally having no way of knowing that the person I fell in love with would turn into somebody else. I took back control by releasing all the shame that I’d loved another enough to stay, in the hope that they would change.

All of it I learned from. None of it I will repeat.

I am wiser in how to avoid similar relationships in the future and there is so much power in that. So I’m learning to forgive myself, and I won’t forget the lessons learned.

If you’re resonating with my journey in some way, know that whilst we may have taken a wrong turn on route, that road sign was bloody misleading. We’re on the right track now, heading in the right direction and that’s all that matters. There’s a full tank of gas in the tank, and the possibilities are limitless.

Enjoy reclaiming control of you, because you deserve so much peace, love and happiness.

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“You take your power back by letting people go.”

— Emma Xu

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Have you been in a toxic relationship? How did you take back control? I’d love to know. Please share your comments below.