QUICK TEST FOR 3 SIGNS OF A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP

1 . CONFUSION

Are you finding yourself in a state of confusion?
Are you regularly asking yourself, “what is going on here?”
Is your partner not honest, clear and forthright in their communication with you?
Do you find yourself feeling like you’re crazy?

2. INVESTIGATION

Have you become a full-time private investigator?
Are you asking yourself questions…is this right? is this normal?
Are you trying to remember details?
Do you find yourself scrolling through messages, checking pockets, briefcases, emails, etc.?

3. COERCION

Are you being pushed to do something against your will?
Covert coercion. You know it’s happening because you can feel it.
Are you feeling like you are being manipulated, with guilt or shame being used to get you to do what they want you to do?

A few more “clues”…

• you keep secrets.

• you give chances when you have that feeling you should walk away.

• you start to see other women as the “enemy” and distance yourself from them. (“if they would just “behave”, my relationship would be fine.”)

• you say no to sex but allow yourself to be pushed into it anyway.

• you’re afraid of confronting him or upsetting him. You go over and over in your head how you will say something to him.

• you may dress or act in ways that are not in character with who you want to be.

• you feel completely alone.

• you may be observing the behaviours or the interactions between you from the 3rd person perspective - you are split off from it.

• you put up with vulgar name-calling.

If you are answering yes to these, please know there is so much support and love waiting for you. Please reach out for help.

I would love support..

(continued… ) Some of us experience love in our relationships with our siblings.
Some of us experience love in our relationships with our parents.
Some of us experience love in our relationships with our children, our partners, and our friends.

And it may not be perfect. It may even be toxic love. Painful love. Dependent love. That “I can do nothing apart from you, love.”
But it’s what we know. It’s familiar.

And if that love leaves us, rejects us, abandons us, divorces us, dies on us - where do we begin to process all the emotions that come up?

We may have made choices that we feel so guilty about, we may be struggling with feelings of anger, of worthlessness, we may have deep regrets, or have behaved in ways that we now feel deep shame, and we long to redo it. We long to go back and knowing that we can’t, we are stuck in an endless loop of painful mind-chatter as we try to find a way to be with our pain, to find a way to absolve ourselves in an effort to find relief. To find freedom. We are truly left suffering.

I remember being in that suffering and seeing the quote at the bottom of a page in a magazine, “the only way out is through”… and I knew in my heart that whatever “through” was, wherever that path led, I needed to go there. If you feel that I am the one to walk beside you on this path towards compassion, towards self-love, towards that willingness to be vulnerable in order to heal, I would love to do that work with you.

Contact me.