How to Love Yourself Again After a Toxic Relationship Ends
When it comes to learning how to love yourself, experiencing a loving relationship with another person has the potential to be profoundly healing. Healthy relationships have the ability to encourage self-love.
But when you’ve lived through a toxic relationship, you also know the dark side of relationships, which is that they can also be terribly destructive to your self-esteem and sense of self-worth.
Learning to love yourself just as you are is a vital part of healing after a breakup, especially when the relationship was toxic or abusive. Healing after a toxic relationship begins with healing your relationship with yourself and rediscovering your innate self-worth.
One of the things that can make letting go of a toxic relationship so difficult is that healing requires you come to terms with how you were treated in the relationship. When we work with individuals healing from past relationships, one of the first questions they ask is, “How did I let this happen to me? What’s wrong with me?”
So, let’s get something straight before we go any further. Nothing’s wrong with you. Bad things happen to good people.
We can all end up in bad relationships where we allow ourselves to be treated poorly, especially because until you’ve been in a toxic relationship, it’s nearly impossible to see it coming.
When you look back on the relationship after it’s over, it’s so much easier to see all the signs of a toxic relationship that you couldn’t see when you were still in the midst of the relationship. It’s vital to be gentle with yourself as you start looking back at the relationship, so that you don’t spiral into shame and self-judgment about what you tolerated in the relationship.
We’ve guided many people through the process of healing from toxic relationships. The first part of recovery almost always involves working through feelings of embarrassment, shame or guilt about how bad the relationship was.
Cultural messages about abusive and toxic relationships contribute to the difficulty recovering from an unhealthy relationship.
Be aware that you’ve probably internalized some pretty toxic messages about the ‘kind of person’ who finds herself or himself in an abusive or toxic relationship.
Personally, I cringe every time I hear a woman say, “If a man treated me like that, I’d leave immediately.” I used to say that myself when I was young … before I was in an abusive relationship myself. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about why people say that, why they make it seem like no one who has a functioning brain on their shoulders would ever end up in a toxic relationship.
Believing that you’re too savvy to ever end up in a toxic relationship might be comforting, but it’s just not true. And it’s a very damaging message to people who are leaving an unhealthy relationship.
It reinforces the notion that there’s something wrong with you for having been in a bad relationship. There’s not.
We’ve worked with men and women from all walks of life, all kinds of backgrounds, all levels of education, all kinds of financial backgrounds who found themselves in toxic and damaging relationships.
If there’s anything I want you to take from this fact, it’s that You Are Not Alone. And also: things will get better.
You will heal and recover. You have the opportunity to come out of this even stronger as you learn how to love yourself at a deeper level. You have the opportunity to learn self-compassion and develop an unshakeable sense of self-worth. And you have the opportunity to get very, very clear about what you deserve in a relationship.
How to heal from a toxic relationship
Step 1: Letting go of a toxic relationship
Toxic relationships take a tremendous toll on your self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-love.
Bad relationships gradually erode your sense of self-worth over time, so that toward the end of the relationship, you might tolerate behavior that would have had you walking out the door in the beginning of the relationship.
In a toxic relationship, your sense of what a healthy relationship looks like gets confused and distorted over time. Once your perception of what’s normal gets distorted, You’re not able to see the signs of an unhealthy relationship that would have stood out like a neon sign at the beginning of the relationship.
One of the things that can make letting go of a toxic relationship so difficult is that you have to come to terms with how you were treated in the relationship.
This is often a slow, confusing, and painful process.
It can feel like juggling vastly different realities—what your partner told you was reality and what you now see as reality—without knowing for sure which was in right. Because what happens in these relationships is so confusing, the natural first step is to question many things.
It’s very common to experience waves of self-doubt in which you wonder whether you’ve got it all wrong and maybe your former partner’s version of reality is the right one.
When you’re in this stage of healing from a toxic relationship, writing down what you remember from the relationship can help you create a more solid sense of reality, which will help you move into the next stages of healing.
Step 2: How did this happen to me?
Asking yourself questions about the relationship is a vital step in recovering from a bad relationship. But how you ask these questions matters.
When it comes to healing after a breakup, there’s no self-judgment allowed.
As you’re healing after a breakup, the first tendency might be to blame yourself for the bad things that happened in your relationship. Asking the question, What happened?, is important.
The challenge is asking yourself these questions with self-compassion, kindness, and curiosity.
Instead of asking these questions as a way of blaming yourself, a good first step toward repairing your relationship with yourself is to learn how to question yourself gently and lovingly.
I want to give you the analogy I use with clients when they ask, “What’s wrong with me? How did I not see what was happening?” I compare trying to see the full picture of a bad relationship to standing in the middle of a snow globe while chaos swirls around you.
Toxic relationships keep you in a state of crisis that leaves your head spinning. It’s hard to focus on any one thing that’s happening which means you can’t see anything clearly.
The hardest part of leaving a bad relationship is trying to find the emotional and mental space you need in order to step back and really see what’s going on.
As you ask the question, How did I let this happen?, remember you’re not alone.
This is a question we all have to ask ourselves as part of recovering from a toxic relationship. The key is not to blame yourself.
As you explore what happened through the lens of self-compassion and curiosity, you’ll be able to learn from this relationship.
When you inquire deeply without judgment, you can find answers to the question, how did this happen?, that don’t involve blaming yourself. When you’re curious as you ask the hard questions, you gain a clearer understanding of what happened.
Which means your next relationship can be better.
The main difference between people who have a string of toxic relationships and people who experience one toxic relationship comes down to taking the time to reflect on, and understand, what happened.
When you understand what happened, you can avoid repeating a similar pattern in your next relationship. You’ll be able to see those early warning signs of a toxic relationship and get out before you become invested in making the relationship work.
The other important factor to keep in mind is that our childhood experiences can also make us more susceptible to ending up in a toxic relationship. If we didn’t have role models for healthy relationships when we were growing up (and I include myself in this category), it can be difficult to really know what a healthy, loving relationship looks like.
The more you understand the signs of unhealthy relationships, the more you’ll also recognize signs of healthy relationships, which helps you build confidence in yourself and your ability to have a healthy relationship in the future.
Sometimes the process of reflecting after the relationship on what you tolerated while you were in the relationship might invite spirals of shame and self-judgment.
When this happens, it can be healthy to take a break and clear your head if you’re getting caught in self-judgment. This can help you start fresh by approaching important questions from a perspective of self-love.
Keep reading for some suggestions about how to practice self-compassion and self-love as you heal.
As you learn how to love yourself, you’re quite literally healing your relationship with yourself while you recover from your relationship.
Step 3: learning to trust yourself (and your sense of reality)
Instead of seeking consensus on what happened in the relationship, start validating your own perspective on the relationship, no matter how your former partner sees things.
Everyone wants to feel understood. This is especially true in intimate relationships. That’s why knowing how to communicate with your partner is vital for a fulfilling relationship. But toxic relationships twist this important need to feel known. The desire to share is healthy, but the circumstances make it unwise.
Your partner is unlikely to validate your understanding of reality. This means that attempts to be understood may leave you feeling more confused, anxious, guilty, and worried that perhaps the problem was in your head … or maybe even that you were the abusive one.
When you first begin realizing you're in an unhealthy relationship, your initial impulse might be to try to get your partner to see it too. It’s really tempting to try to work things out through talking about it and pointing out examples of toxic or abusive behavior.
There might have been promises of changed behaviors. Such promises usually don't withstand the test of time. Eventually, it can feel defeating to mention problematic behavior because things don't change.
The key to breaking out of this cycle is to recognize that you don't need anyone else to agree with you.
You have permission to not like what’s happened in the relationship. You have permission to make choices about what you think and how you respond. You do not need anyone else to agree with you.
It may mean that you are misunderstood or blamed, but you don't have to prove anything to anyone. You have permission to have your own separate, even opposite, understanding of what’s going on. You have permission to honor and validate your own sense of what’s important.
The work of recovering from the relationship requires that you detach from the other person’s ability to control your sense of reality.
Instead of engaging in conversations to establish a shared reality about the relationship, put your efforts into rebuilding your relationship with yourself so that you can move forward in your life.
When you focus on healing your relationship with yourself, you’ll start trusting yourself more.
As you pay attention to how you feel, without needing to justify it to anyone else, you develop a stronger connection with yourself, you learn how to trust your intuition, and you learn how to listen to yourself when something doesn’t feel right.
step 4: no more blame
One of the most valuable ways you can start reclaiming your self-worth is to let go of self-blame and also let go of blaming the other person.
Part of why people struggle with letting go of a toxic relationship is the need to assign blame.
The urge to figure out who’s at fault can be powerful and seductive, but ultimately it’s a trap.
When the other person doesn’t accept responsibility, it’s easy to get sucked into a cycle of shifting between blaming the other person and blaming yourself.
Stepping out of the role of figuring out who’s to blame allows you the freedom to escape this cycle and leave this toxic relationship behind for good.
Focusing on assigning blame stirs up intense feelings that can keep you stuck in the past, feeling trapped and helpless, unable to move forward.
Instead of trying to get your partner to see their role in the toxic dynamic, discover the power of getting unstuck from a toxic relationship by using neutral language that doesn’t assign blame.
If you really want to fully let go of a toxic relationship, Here’s the mantra we recommend:
“This relationship’s not working for me.”
When you focus on repeating this mantra, you’ll recognize that it’s an undeniably true statement. There’s no arguing with it. As you repeat it to yourself (or to your former partner) as often as you need to, you’ll gain clarity … and freedom.
“This relationship’s not working for me” reminds you to focus on what’s not working in the relationship, without requiring anyone accept blame. It communicates that you have value and worth that wasn’t honored in this relationship.
This is a powerful way of affirming your own self-worth and turning in the direction of creating the life you want—one in which you honor your own value and care for yourself the way you deserve to be cared for.
Reclaiming your self-worth and value is a vital part of how to learning how to love yourself again.
It matters how others treat you. And it matters how you treat yourself.
The more you treat yourself with kindness and respect, and expect the same from others in your life, the more confident you’ll feel as you move along the path toward more self-love and self-acceptance.
step 5: Let yourself grieve
Grieving after a breakup is an necessary part of healing and being able to move forward into the next chapter of your life.
While it’s crucial to let yourself grieve the end of any relationship, grief about the end of a toxic relationship is more complicated.
It’s normal to miss the other person, even when you know the relationship wasn’t healthy or good for you.
Oftentimes, the knowledge that the relationship was unhealthy can create feelings of guilt when you’re sad and grieving and might be missing the other person. It’s an act of self-love to give yourself permission to grieve and feel sad about the breakup.
The truth is that all relationships have good parts.
It’s important to give yourself space to mourn the loss of the best parts of the relationship.
You might also need to mourn for what you’d hoped this relationship could be … those hopes and dreams that kept you in the relationship after you knew you should end it.
You also need time to grieve for the hurtful ways you were treated and the behaviors you tolerated in the hopes that your partner would change.
In his book Unattended Sorrow, Stephen Levine writes that “in every loss there is an opportunity to uncover and heal the losses of a lifetime. The deeper the loss, the deeper the opportunity for healing.”
Allow yourself room to grieve as long as you need to. This is an essential part of learning how to love yourself better than you did before this relationship. Approach the process of grieving as a chance to learn more about yourself and to grow in self-compassion.
step 6: Give yourself permission to feel good
Toxic relationships have a way of taking up all the oxygen and leaving you with little time or energy for self-care.
Once you identify the ways you ended up neglecting yourself and your own needs, desires, and goals during the relationship, you’ll be on the path to healing your relationship with yourself. Learning to love yourself again means taking extra good care of yourself, especially in the ways you neglected yourself during the relationship.
What is self-care and why is it important?
One of the most important parts of healing from any breakup is to refocus your attention on nurturing your relationship with yourself.
Most of us have a tendency to try to distract ourselves when we’re feeling sad—binge watching shows or immediately jumping on a dating app after a breakup. But avoiding sad feelings only delays the healing process.
As you’re grieving the end of your relationship, be intentional about making time for self-care.
Here’s our definition of self-care: it’s self-love in action.
Think about it: we care for the things we love. The connection between self-care and self-love is no different.
Developing self-love involves taking time to explore and discover what self-care activities and experiences nourish your body, mind, heart, and spirit. Self-care is all about nurturing your connection with yourself. Cultivating a deeper connection with yourself is a vital part of the process of healing from a toxic relationship and learning how to love yourself again.
Another benefit of self-care: every time you tend to your own personal well-being, you’re sending yourself a powerful message that you matter.
One of the most damaging messages you can take from a toxic relationship is the belief that you don’t deserve to be treated well. By engaging in self-care, you actively challenge the destructive messages that eroded your sense of self-worth.
With every act of self-care, you send a strong message that you deserve good things in life.
Establishing daily rituals of self-care is a way of keeping yourself grounded as you heal and recover from this relationship. As you care for yourself, you heal the wounds of the relationship, grow more resilient, and self-love becomes more natural.
We’ve discovered in our work with clients that the idea of self-care can sometimes be confusing or difficult to implement.
So we created Healed and Whole, our guide to self-care activities that are especially helpful in recovering from a toxic relationship and for learning to love yourself again.
Enter your email to get a copy of Healed and Whole: 5 Ways to Nurture Your Heart and Love Yourself More After a Breakup.
Conclusion
Healing your heart and recovering your sense of self-worth after a toxic relationship takes time.
Be patient with yourself through the process of learning how to love yourself again. It’s can be challenging to work through the belief that you somehow deserved being treated badly in your relationship. When you’re treated poorly by someone you love, your self-esteem suffers. Even when you start out in the relationship full of self-confidence, unhealthy relationships still take a toll on how you see yourself.
We find it most helpful to approach self-love as a practice. You can learn to love yourself again, again and again. And again. And again.
Be sure to download Healed & Whole: 5 Ways to Nurture Your Heart and Love Yourself More After a Breakup. You can sign up below. And if you feel like you need some extra help or support through the process of healing, you might be interested in Ask Angela: (almost) on call relationship coaching.
Here’s what we want you to remember: Bad things happen to good people. But good things also happen to good people. And you are worthy of receiving good things.
xoxo,
Angela & Daniel
Enter your email and get your copy of Healed & Whole: 5 Ways to Nurture Your Heart and Love Yourself More After a Breakup
About angela & Daniel
We help those with painful childhood experiences to heal your relationship with yourself, deeply connect with others, and learn the skills for having fulfilling relationships.
Fulfilling relationships are an essential part of living a good life and yet, many of us (perhaps even most of us) have core wounds from childhood experiences that affect our ability to have the kinds of intimate relationships in adulthood that we long to have.
