Does your relationship have the signs of a bad relationship? Do you have anxieties about your relationship? Maybe you need to know how to recognise the signs of toxic relationships.
Manipulation or control, gaslighting or emotional abuse – these are just some signs that you could be in a toxic relationship. Here, I will explore the signs in detail so that you can figure out whether you are in a bad relationship or not.
Understanding Manipulation in Toxic Relationships
Manipulation is a key strategy the toxic individual uses to dominate their partner. Manipulation involves overt or subtle behaviours that can influence and control your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. Common manipulative tactics include guilt tripping, emotional blackmail, isolating you from friends and family, and undermining your sense of self-worth. The toxic individual wants you to feel incompetent, why would you not need them for your decision-making?
Another familiar toxic technique is gaslighting: by deliberately distorting your understanding of facts and events, the abuser makes you question your reality, until the boundaries of your reality are transformed (by their demand!) to conform to new ones. The truly masterful use of the gaslight technique develops to the point where the abused becomes convinced not only that something isn’t what it seems, but that it is impossible to know what is what. Gaslighting is the most destructive of the toxic techniques because you end up feeling crazy (and, in reality, you are being driven a little crazy).
There is also love bombing, where the toxic person is very smothering at the beginning of the relationship, with an onslaught of compliments, affection and gifts; it is all about winning you over as part of the lure. Once they have stepped productively into your life it’s the beginning of the end as the smothering love bombing flips to manipulation and control.
These behaviours are manipulative and can be harmful – you have a right to protect yourself from a toxic relationship. Trust your intuition and reach out to friends and family members, or a professional, if you think you might be a victim of gaslighting.
Signs of Control in Toxic Relationships
And of course, a toxic person who wants to control you will also want to manipulate your emotions – to make you feel trapped and powerless. You’ll notice that they want you to do or feel things in a certain way and feel angry or deeply unhappy when you assert your own preferences or try to act independently of them. They might try to control money or your friendships; they might order you to stop talking about certain topics or criticise your choices if you disagree with them.
Perhaps the most obvious sign of being controlled is being isolated from your support system. Toxic people might try to discourage your getting together with friends and family, or actively stop it from happening; in the process, they make themselves your sole conduit for social activities and emotional support. This makes it a lot easier for toxic people to maintain control over your life. They might also attempt to monitor your contacts, such as reading your messages or keeping track of your online activity.
Financial control is another tactic and tactic of abuse, a toxic person controlling, denying or restricting your access to money, making you financially dependent on them. Then there’s abuse by confinement, the toxic being may seek to separate you from others by geographic isolation, for example moving far away from family and friends. This can be subtle such as isolating you in a friend or family member’s home or large estate and not allowing you to leave the property. It can be overt like holding you captive in a basement dungeon.
These are important indicators of control – and realizing that these things are happening to you might be the first step towards ending a toxic relationship and taking back control. Setting limits, sharing your feelings and standing up for yourself might be absolutely unthinkable as long as you remain stuck within the cycle of abuse.
Recognizing Gaslighting in Toxic Relationships
Gaslighting attempts to make you doubt your own reality through manipulation, ensuring that you are left wondering and questioning your own judgment and sanity. Gaslighting can either be subtle or overt, and the longer you extend the relationship, the more ingrained gaslighting becomes, leaving more and more dangerous collateral damage in its wake. A gaslighter is able to gaslight by exploiting a host of behaviours: denying they’ve said something, distorting the facts, and deliberately instilling doubts about your perception, memory and, most dangerously, your sanity.
One of the most common tactics is to minimise your feelings: ‘You’re overreacting’ or ‘ You’re too sensitive’, or ‘You’re just imagining things.’ This can be so severe that you start to ‘second guess’ yourself and your own response to things, and thereby feel that your own emotions and reality is somehow off-kilter. You start to feel, well, crazy.
Another type of gaslighting the perpetrator uses is projection, a tactic where they accuse you of a behaviour or motivation that they themselves possess. By deflecting blame to you, they evade their own responsibility, and manipulate your perception of events.
The constant battering of gaslighting will diminish your sense of self-worth and your confidence and undermine your judgment. Trust your gut – ask yourself if someone seems out of step, and then have a professional or friends you trust validate your instincts. Finally, recognising gaslighting is allows you to take a step back, reclaim your reality and move forward on your own.
Identifying Emotional Abuse in Toxic Relationships
You suffer from emotional abuse if your mental health is battered by constant put-downs, insults and belittlement – all done with the reported intention to break your self-esteem. It is difficult to be aware that you are a victim of emotional abuse, for such a cruel treatment creeps in gradually, is subtle and polished – but if you are aware of what you are going through, escape becomes possible.
An emotional abuse is characterized by constant criticism and humiliation for example the abuser can keep telling you how useless are your achievements in order to make you be sure how little you are worthy of attention. Another form is humiliation when the abuser uses derogatory words or sarcasm to bring your esteem down in order to manipulate you.
A further form of psychopathic emotional abuse is to take over your emotions, to tell you how to feel, to control your responses, and instruct you to view the world emotionally in a particular way that suits them. Your feelings might be ignored or told they are not real, not warranted, not true, distorted, not rational. You will be criticised, shouted at, told you are feeling something you are not because you are supposedly like your victimised mother/father/brother/sister. You will be exposed to passive-aggressive abuse: the silent treatment, deprivation of affection.
Emotional abuse can leave you feeling trapped, helpless, and isolated. It’s important to reach out for support and recognize that you deserve to be treated with respect and kindness. Ending the cycle of emotional abuse may require professional help and support, but it is a crucial step towards healing and regaining your self-esteem.
The Impact of Toxic Relationships on Mental Health
Bad romantic relationships can have huge impacts on your mental health. You could be so concerned with how your partner will act, what he or she is going to say or think about you – always doubting whether you’re going to come off well – that you can spend your whole life in a state of stress, anxiety and misery and, in the long run, develop mental-health problems from depression and anxiety disorders to low self-esteem.
In a toxic relationship, you may walk on eggshells, continually bracing for the other person’s next fit of anger or withdrawal, constantly tension your muscles in anticipation of bad deeds to come. The emotional crush and chaos can lead to a state of chronic stress that leaves you unable to concentrate, sleepless at night, with a persistent cloud over life.
The effects of being in toxic relationships do have a detrimental effect on one’s self. Thus, it is extremely important to look after your mental wellbeing. Speaking to therapists and counsellors is also viable if one starts to lose the rope. The expert advice that a therapist offers could help you come out of the trauma of toxic relationships and start over.
How to Safely Exit a Toxic Relationship
Leaving a toxic relationship is tough and could potentially be dangerous. Depending on your circumstances, it’s essential that you draft an exit strategy. Here are seven ways to help you leave a toxic relationship soon and as safely as possible.
- Safety Planning: Think about your level of safety and create a safety plan to have in place if and when you do want to leave the relationship. This may include planning a safe place to go – perhaps with your children – if you do ever have to say: ‘I don’t feel safe here’ to the abuser. Think about who you could speak to, friends/family perhaps, to tell them what is actually going on. Consider finding a person (eg, lawyer or talking to support group) to discuss with on how to get a restraining order.
- Gather Support: GET Support from friends, family or a support group if you can’t seem to get the job done solo. Regardless of the nature of your battle, having a support network will help you keep your power fighting and also keep you up with all the things you’re trying to get done while you’re going through it all.
- Cut Off Contact: Once you have escaped, cut off all contact with the toxic person by blocking their phone number, deleting them on your social media and avoiding any situations where you could interact with them.
- Seek Professional Help: Go to therapy or counselling to heal wounds from the ToxiOclock experience; you can benefit from 1:1 time with a practising mental health professional – they can help you develop a plan to move forward and gain the proper boundaries and expectations to use in future relationships.
You are leaving for your own sake, in your own interests, doing what’s self-caring, self-saving, self-protective. You deserve the supportive, intimate relationship with someone who treats you well.
Healing and Recovering from a Toxic Relationship
Being in a toxic relationship means that you are going to need the time to heal, the time to love yourself, the time to provide for yourself, the time to rebuild. Here are a few ways that you can initiate the healing.
- Practice Self-Care: Do something kind or providing (for someone else). Take care of your own needs and those of others. Care for people, animals, plants around you. Exercise, eat well, sleep, get some leisure or relaxation time, including stress reduction (eg, meditation, sunset walking, cycling, nature park events, theatres, coffee with friends and family).
- Set Boundaries: Define boundaries in your relationships and learn to say no to things that are not OK with you. Assertively and clearly communicate your needs and expectations. Find the people and relationships where setting boundaries is recognised and accepted.
- Focus on Personal Growth: Use these experiences as an opportunity to grow and develop yourself, Double-down on your interests, treating these periods as an opportunity to reflect on your strength and an opportunity for growth. Look to the future; set personal goals and become a better version of yourself. Join new activities and seek out age-appropriate activities to do in your community. Find others who will empower you to engage in healthy friendships and create a support system for yourself.
- Seek Support: If you aren’t able to get yourself out of the grips of pain from the toxic relationship, call a therapist, grief counsellor or counsellor of some kind that you trust.
Remember, recovery takes time …Go gently…. Do it slowly. Appreciate and acknowledge every step.
Seeking Professional Help and Support
If you are struggling to navigate the complexities of a toxic relationship, seeking professional help and support can be invaluable. Therapists, counselors, and support groups can provide a safe space to explore your feelings, gain clarity, and develop strategies for healing and moving forward.
Getting professional help can provide a view from ‘outside’, support, and assistance in creating distance from the toxicity and establishing healthier patterns in which to relate to others. Reaching out is empowering, not a sign of weakness. It is a positive step on the path of a happier, healthier future.
Conclusion: Empowering Yourself to Create Healthy Relationships
Because toxic relationships can be very subtle, knowing how to spot the red flags of those warning signs, not recognising your partner’s ownership of you, holding on to the idea of being loved if you’re patient and tolerant, being aware of the signs of manipulation, control, gaslighting and emotional abuse, is key to your wellbeing.
Remember, you deserve a relationship that is founded on mutual respect, reciprocal trust and genuine support. When you take care of your mental health, set boundaries and ask for help when needed, you keep yourself in a strong position to build healthy relationships, and live a life you will love.
Take the first step towards a brighter future – acknowledge the clues, and then take the necessary actions to remove yourself from this soul-destroying relationship. For only in having a happy life can you be in a loving healthy relationship that helps to heal your soul and brings you the happiness and love that works for your mind and body.
