I wanted to talk to you today about signs that you are in an unhealthy relationship.
So,
Signs that we are in an unhealthy relationship.
The first sign is basically just a feeling of fear.
So if you have an underlying feeling of fear in the relationship,
Whether it's any kind of relationship with a friend,
With a partner,
With family members,
Parents,
Children,
Whatever.
If you,
If there is some fear present there,
When you're with that person or when you're thinking about that person,
That's a sign that you may be in an unhealthy relationship dynamic.
Secondary to this,
If you notice yourself in your relationship with this person,
Kind of self-censoring before you speak to them,
Before you express yourself,
Before you speak your truth.
If you notice yourself kind of going through what you want to say and censoring yourself or changing editing what you want to say before you actually say it to this person,
That's also a sign that you may be in an unhealthy relationship.
Because you don't feel safe to just fully speak your truth.
You need to edit and self-censor because you are anticipating what they might be,
How they might respond or react to you.
So there's a lot that's going on inside you before you actually just speak to them.
So this is another sign.
Another sign that you are,
A third sign that you are in an unhealthy relationship is just that your needs are not being met.
So in our relationships,
All our relationships,
Close intimate relationships,
We have needs which have to be met in order for us to feel healthy in that relationship.
So those are emotional needs,
Psychological needs,
Physical needs,
They might be also financial needs.
But our most really important basic needs in our close relationships are our emotional needs.
So we need to feel that the person we are in relationship with actually does care about us,
Actually cares how we feel,
Actually is going to respond appropriately if we bring up some hurt that we've experienced in the relationship.
And responding appropriately is listening to us,
Taking accountability of their part in that hurt,
Being able to say sorry.
So if your emotional needs are not being met,
You may feel just like there's an unequal dynamic.
So they are taking up a lot more space in the relationship,
Them and their life and talking about their stuff is taking up more space than you.
And when you try and balance that out and speak about your issues,
Your life,
What's going on for you,
You might feel that that person that you're in relationship with does not have quite the same level of interest in listening to you as you do for them.
So you start to kind of feel small or make,
Unconsciously you might be making yourself small to stay in that relationship because you notice that there is not an equal space for you there.
That person is not equally interested in being present emotionally for you,
Listening to you,
Having empathy,
Understanding you,
Wanting to know what's going on for you.
And that can even be things like you are always the one that's arranging to meet up with them and you're always the one that's asking about them,
About what's going on with them.
First,
You're kind of doing the labor of the relationship and it's not reciprocated so much.
They are not reaching out to organize to meet with you.
They are not really matching your level of interest or attention.
So that's another sign that you may be in an unhealthy or a toxic relationship.
So fourth sign that you may be in an unhealthy toxic relationship is that your arguments might feel like they are never resolved.
So having arguments full stop is not necessarily a sign that your relationship is bad or toxic or unhealthy because arguments happen,
People have different points of view,
Sometimes tempers get raised.
Yeah,
Sometimes people are triggered,
People's different traumas from their childhood may be triggered in close relationships,
That's okay.
But the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy dynamic is that in the healthy relationship,
We're able to acknowledge each other's different points of view,
We're able to take accountability,
And we're able to bring that argument to a resolution.
And the difference there,
So with an unhealthy relational dynamic,
That might be difficult because somebody always needs to be right,
If they always need to be right,
Then it's unlikely that argument will come to a healthy resolution because a person does not want to back down from their point of view.
So that can become an ego battle,
A battle of wills if you like.
And it can feel like that argument just either escalates or kind of goes down the drain to a kind of just a place of negativity and insults.
And somehow it just never kind of resolves,
You're not able to successfully de-escalate and resolve that argument.
And that's another sign that your relationship might not be very healthy.
And why would that be?
That your relational partner might have issues with egotism,
They might need to always be right,
They might have issues with not being able to say sorry,
They might feel an intense level of shame if they admit they've done something bad or wrong.
All of those things can mean that arguments never get resolved.
But you can really know that you are in an unhealthy and possibly toxic relationship if your arguments don't get resolved.
So a fifth reason or fifth sign that you are in an unhealthy or toxic relationship is that your partner or you,
Yeah I'm not saying who it is here,
I'm just talking about the nature of the relationship,
Somebody in the relationship is unable to control their anger.
So they might have anger rage issues and they explode in anger and so maybe just yelling at in your face or maybe you're yelling in their face and that person is not able to control,
They're not able to manage their explosive anger.
That is very very dangerous and a very unhealthy dynamic and something that if it continues on will very likely destroy that relationship,
Signal the end of that relationship.
So the sixth sign that you are not in a healthy relationship is that you don't feel supported.
So again this is coming back to equality,
Mutuality in the relationship.
You don't feel that it's an equal relationship,
You're not as supported by your partner as you support them for example.
So that might mean that you are attending their important events in their life,
Being a supportive partner but they are not doing the same thing for you.
That might mean that you put in lots of effort to create an amazing birthday celebration for them but they might not even barely remember your birthday.
So yeah your partner might not even remember your birthday let alone make a big special effort to make that an amazing day for you.
So number seven,
Your partner,
Your relational partner may use your vulnerabilities against you.
So things that you have shared with them in vulnerable moments,
So things that perhaps you are afraid of,
Things that you're perhaps embarrassed or ashamed about,
Things that perhaps you regret,
Difficult things like this from your experience in life that you shared with them in a safe vulnerable moments are brought back and used as weapons against you.
So when you are in any kind of a conflict or a fight with this person they bring up this vulnerable thing that you shared with them in the vulnerable moment and they use that to try and stick a hole in you,
To try and bring you down,
To try and hurt you basically,
To try and make you feel bad.
This is a really big red flag or sign that you are in a toxic and unhealthy relationship.
So and our last,
My last point for today,
The last sign,
Eighth sign that you may be in an unhealthy or toxic relationship is that you just may feel a lot of criticisms,
Small criticisms of your person on a regular basis.
So they might seem like really innocuous,
Unimportant things like you are cooking and they criticize the way you're peeling the potatoes or peeling the carrots or they constantly reminding you of some little specks of dust on the floor,
Yeah some little imperfection in the environment and implying that it's your fault that things are not quite ever ever quite clean enough.
So it might seem like I said inane,
Innocuous,
But they're small things if this if this is a pattern of behavior which goes on you can be sure that this is a way of controlling you and kind of making you feel a little bit afraid and a little bit small in that relationship.
So those are our eight things that you need to look out for,
Eight signs that you may be in an unhealthy or a toxic relationship with somebody.
So if you do notice any of these things are present in your relationship or relationships,
I do encourage you to be brave enough and strong enough to bring these up with your relational partner and see if you can have a conversation about it.
If you cannot,
If that's absolutely not possible then that's the time when you might need to reconsider your position in that relationship,
Reconsider how much you continue to invest in that relationship,
In that person and you may want to just pull back your energy a bit from that dynamic.
If it's a family dynamic where you're never going to be able to swap out the family members,
They are permanent in your life,
You may want to just pull back from that relationship and take some time to reflect.
If it's an intimate partner or a friendship you may want to you may want to end that relationship or friendship if you really do bring these issues up and your friend is not a friend or your intimate partner is not able to have a conversation about it and take accountability for their part and work on resolving that with you.
