psychology
5 things you are blind to when stuck in an unhealthy relationship
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Unhealthy relationships usually have an impact on our perception and worldview. You can read here which things typically slip into the blind spot when we surround ourselves with people who harm us.
Whether partnership, friendship or family relationship, many people have already experienced a relationship that was not good for them, that dragged them down and cost them strength. Which was unhealthy or toxic in some way. Of course, there are varying degrees of unhealthy social connections, from blatant abuse to inadvertent devaluation, and some types of relationships may weigh us less than others. In the worst case we are traumatized, in the best case we lose time and energy – but in most cases, an unhealthy relationship disappears something from our view that is very, very important for our lives. For example …
Five things you become blind to when stuck in a toxic relationship
1. Your self worth
When we spend a lot of time with someone who is not doing us good, it inevitably has a negative effect on our self-esteem. We develop self-doubts and feel that we have to pretend for the: the other: n. But the truth is: we are all unique and lovable for who we are and what defines us. People who are right for us make us feel it.
2. Your circle of friends
Unhealthy relationships typically swallow up so much time and energy that we neglect other relationships in our lives because of them. Often this has to do with the fact that people who are unhealthy for us demand a lot of attention from us, are jealous and are not ready to integrate into our circle of friends. As a result, we forget or overlook that there are enough (other) people in our life to whom we are important and with whom we like to be together, because it feels easy and beautiful.
3. Your right to respect
People who don’t do us good don’t always treat us obviously badly. As a rule, however, they lack basic respect, which can be expressed, for example, in the fact that they do not listen to us properly, that they believe and let us through, that we did not deserve our successes, but simply luck, etc. Downplaying feelings can also be an expression of a lack of respect. When we spend a lot of time with such people, we get used to it and forget that we have a right to respect and appreciation from others – especially from people who are close to us and whom we allow to participate in our lives.
4. Your independence
When we are in a toxic relationship, we usually feel subliminally that something is wrong. Somehow we intuitively know that it affects this relationship, but we can rarely classify it correctly. We think it’s up to us, we’re doing something wrong and have to do everything we can to make the relationship work. In doing so, we focus on this project, on this one connection that needs to be repaired, that we connect ourselves and our self-worth with it and feel dependent on the person in question. What we completely ignore and forget in the process are all the things that we have already mastered in our lives. The decisions we made and the consequences of which we dealt with. We forget that we are autonomous, independent people who have our lives in their own hands and who can shape it according to their own ideas. Exclude inclusive people who make us doubt it.
5. Your needs
We almost always have to put our own needs aside for people who are not doing us good. Whether they actively demand it or rather subtly dictate it through their nature and behavior, in an unhealthy relationship we forego what we need and what we want. In the long term, this means that we unlearn how to even perceive our needs. We forget z. B. How it is to feel that we need more space and to take it away from us. Or that we want confirmation and positive feedback in a personal relationship and that we are interested in our thoughts.
Sources used: healthline.com, womenshealthmag.com