When we choose to be in a relationship with someone who tends to have excessive emotional baggage or who appears to be emotionally unavailable, we unfortunately step into a relationship filled with manipulation, neglect, and sometimes even abuse, which tends to bring out the worst in us.

Let’s face it, it is quite easy to fall into these types of relationships, especially if we have unresolved trauma or a history of abuse.

Below are some of the ways toxic relationships can make us feel:

1. Insecure

2. Paranoid

3. Unworthy/not good enough

4. Needy or clingy

5. Detached

6. Isolated and alone

7. Inconsistently and anxiously attached

8. A yearning for more (although you aren’t exactly sure what is missing)

9. Like we are always wrong or doing something wrong

Let’s address the feelings behind each of these.

Each one of these feelings listed above is consistent with being in a relationship with someone who is coined as “unavailable” emotionally as they are not able to meet your most basic needs.

Healthy relationships are meant to fill us up, support us, and keep us grounded in ourselves and the relationship. They give us a balance between giving enough to ourselves as well as what we need to be giving each other—this gives us a sense of wholeness in the relationship. The relationship is based on two healthy and whole people who give to themselves as well as each other.

Unfortunately, toxic or unhealthy relationships take more from us than they actually give. Our intuition knows that the relationship is depleting us; however, because we feel unworthy of a healthy love or simply “not good enough,” we think we have to constantly prove ourselves in order to make the relationship work.

It’s simply exhausting.

That’s where the insecurity, paranoia, and neediness or clinginess come in. We don’t know what else to do, so we love more, we try harder, we do everything we can to get their attention in hopes that they will give us what we are giving to them. We are yearning for them to love us like they once did, hence we ultimately feel isolated and alone.

We walk on eggshells in fear of upsetting them and we always feel we are doing something wrong despite trying to do everything right. The mindset is: if we are perfect, they will love us.

Wrong!

Nope!

Sorry, Charlie, that ain’t how it goes.

The truth is, the harder you try, the more he wants to run away because he is incapable of loving you the way you so badly desire, need, and deserve to be loved.

He just can’t.

It’s not because he is a toxic asshole, and not because he is a narcissist, or because he is broken or incomplete. He can’t because he has his own set of issues that keep him from being able to. So please, have compassion for where he is at; let’s thank him for this super valuable lesson and let him go.

Now is the time for us to look deep within and ask ourselves why would we feel we have to prove ourselves to anyone? Why is that validation so important to us? And how can we fill ourselves up with so much love that we will never repeat that cycle?

The truth is, when we are so depleted from our own self-worth and self-love, no amount of external validation will ever be enough. There is no such thing as consistent external validation, and when our own cup isn’t full with our own deep self-love, it’s like our soul is a deep, dry well and no matter how much water we fill it with, we will never be satiated.

When we search for an external love without loving ourselves, we will always be searching, seeking, and desperately trying to obtain that constant validation telling us that we are worthy.

The truth is, we are all worthy in our own way. Yes, even the toxic.

“Toxic people” are just people who are trying to survive, just like all of us. Unfortunately for them, and those who enter a relationship with them, they lack the skills to self-soothe and overcome many of their fears. They are unable to self-validate or even function in a normal environment with healthy people. They want it, which is why they initially get into a relationship, but, over time, the fear creeps in, their trauma takes over, and they start their cycle of abandonment.

This is their issue, not ours.

Our issue is that we chase them, validate them, work so hard to prove our worth to them only to end up walking away completely depleted.

I find:

>> the more I seek people’s love, attention, affection, or approval, the more I need to love myself

>> the more I seek others—the more I need to self soothe

>> the more my belly aches, gut screams, and I feel intense loneliness, the more I need to lean into myself for comfort

>> the more I yearn for someone—the less I need someone and the more I need to love myself, support myself, trust myself, and rely on myself

>> the more I look to others to validate me, the more I need to purge the feeling that I am not worthy and forgive those who made me feel that way

>> the more I ache, the more I need to forgive those who have hurt me and forgive myself for the ones who I have hurt—especially myself

>> the more anxious I am, the more I need to let go of all that no longer serves me or brings me joy, and focus on the things that do

>> the more I want to chase someone, the more I need to chase myself

>> the more I try to control, the more I need to release control and let go of the resistance and allow the Universe to take over.

Let’s choose ourselves every single day!

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