How to Love Yourself After a Toxic Relationship

Loving yourself after a toxic relationship can feel hard. Toxic relationships damage your self-esteem, leave you feeling worthless and really knock your confidence. 

Being with someone who is toxic or abusive can feel like being at war, you are left exhausted, confused and no longer know who you are. 

That’s why it’s important to build yourself up as soon as the relationship ends, when you feel good about yourself, you are less likely to go back to the toxic relationship. 

Why Toxic Relationships are Addictive

When you heal after a toxic relationship and your trauma, you will no longer find toxic behaviour attractive, or become addicted to it. 

Remember, it’s not your fault someone was abusive, like ever. That’s on them, the reason toxic behaviour is addictive, is they give you just love, then when they take it away you are left wanting it more than ever. 

This hot and cold behaviour keeps you hooked; you are then left trying anything to get that loving behaviour back. You may get a few breadcrumbs, here and there, but this never takes away from the toxic behaviours.

This is why so many people stay in toxic relationships, they convince themselves that the good makes up for the bad, they believe if they can just be “perfect” and stop making their partner angry, things will be good again. 

However, if you find yourself in this trap, the best thing to do is leave.

Yes, I believe you can change how people treat you (everyone is you pushed out & The Law of Assumption) however, abuse is abuse and should never be tolerated. 

Therefore, get out of the relationship, work on yourself and then make a decision if you want to try and change your beliefs about them. 

A lot of the time you will feel differently when you work on your self-concept and truly see your own value.

Loving Yourself After a Toxic Relationship

You have most likely been put down, neglected or starved of attention for so long, which has left you feeling not good enough or like there’s something wrong with you. 

I can imagine that you haven’t said anything nice to yourself for a while, so let’s start there. 

Start talking to yourself with loving kindness, give yourself a lot of compassion and empathy.

Think of the kinds of things you would say to a friend in the same situation as you and start saying them to yourself. 

Then you need to build yourself up again, most toxic people convince their partners that they are the bad ones. It’s very common for an abusive person to convince their partner that they are in fact abusive. 

So, write a list of 25 things that you are good at, or you like about yourself. What makes you special?

When I did this, I found it hard to think of 25 things. But I did in the end and then I recorded them on my voice app and listened to them every day. 

Self-Care after a Toxic Relationship

Self-care is vital after coming out of a toxic relationship. Even if you were the one that left the relationship, it can feel like withdrawing. 

You don’t tend to put yourself first when you are being abuse. You neglect yourself and most likely feel super low. 

This is why self-care is essential. When you start to look after yourself, you are putting your needs first. 

Your self-worth starts to increase, and you will feel like a priority. 

We so often look for other people to put us first or make us a priority but how often do we do that for ourselves?

There are 4 main pillars for self-care that we need to make a priority. 

1. Nutrition 
2. Sleep 
3. Exercise 
4. Meditation 

Once you have these in place you can add some of the following ideas:

1. Journaling 
2. Breathwork 
3. Affirmations 
4. Getting out in nature
5. Reading 
6. Forgiveness work
7. Practising gratitude

Calm Your Nervous System After a Breakup

Did you know abusive relationships can cause PTSD? They can actually cause damage to your mind too. So, it’s super important to work on your triggers.  

There are many ways you can calm your nervous system; you can read my blog post here for more info.

A great place to start with this is Wim Hof and the Polyvagal Theory. Trauma can be stored in your body, practicing Yoga, somatic shaking and dance can help release this.

Forgive Yourself After a Toxic Relationship

When your relationship ends, it can be easy to blame yourself or be angry for even putting yourself in that situation. Please don’t do this!! 

Yes, we create our reality with our beliefs and assumptions but that doesn’t make it your fault. You most likely had trauma from your childhood, that meant your beliefs about yourself weren’t great in the first place. 

Forgive yourself for it all and practice letting go every day. 

This will make space for greatness in your life. 

Believe you can Have a Better Relationship

It can be easy to believe that you don’t deserve a healthy relationship, especially if you have a pattern of attracting toxic people. However, this is far from true!! 

You deserve to have a healthy, happy love that makes you feel safe and secure. 

We manifest what we are, not what we want, therefore start working on the belief that this type of relationship exists and it’s totally available for you. 

Write out what that relationship looks like to you and how you would feel in that relationship. Start affirming that you already feel that way. 

And when you start dating again, take things slow, this means you can be sure the person you are dating is right for you. Ask yourself, “are they right for me”, rather than looking to see if they like you. 

Keep working on your self-concept and how you think and feel about yourself, and you will start to love your life again.

Let me know in the comments what’s the hardest part of being in a toxic relationship. And if you liked this post, please show your love by sharing it!

Love you

PS. If you want some help with rebuilding your life after a breakup, I offer 1 to 1 coaching. You can check out my offers here

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