Whether romantic, family, friendly or professional, toxic relationships are more common than you might think.
Knowing how to take the necessary step back to recognize them allows you to free yourself from these harmful relationships.
7 signs that should alert you.
This relationship does not make you smile
This is the most obvious sign and yet, we often miss it! Because we feel in love, because we don’t want to let someone down, because we tell ourselves that’s how it is, because we have “the head in the handlebars”
… We don’t always take the perspective needed to ask yourself the most fundamental thing in order to know if a relationship is good for us: “Does this relationship make me do more 🙂 or :-(?
You feel unwell
This warning sign is closely related to the first, but it is more subtle. Sometimes, we don’t feel very well with a person, without knowing why.
Perhaps certain traits of his personality echo things you don’t like about yourself (the famous mirror effect!) or even childhood wounds.
Maybe this person is manipulating you, but you don’t really realize it. Anyway, feeling bad in the presence of a person is a sign that should alert you.
There is a form of violence
Again, this may seem obvious, but the violence is often more subtle than you think.
There is physical violence of course, verbal violence, which can take the form of insults. Everyone will agree that this is unacceptable.
But there are also more insidious forms of violence.
This violence is manifested by repeated headaches, reproaches, psychological manipulations…
You are in a dependent relationship
Many toxic relationships have their origins in a relationship of dependency that creates too high expectations of the other.
It is up to you to find happiness and serenity and it is the same for others. People are not there to fill voids! Having these kinds of expectations inevitably generates frustration.
Communication is not smooth
A complicated, if not impossible, dialogue is a sign of a toxic relationship. Maintaining healthy relationships with those around you requires being able to communicate more or less fluidly.
Do you close yourself off and blame the other and vice versa?
Can’t talk without arguing? Are your arguments strewn with “you made me…”, “you are not enough…”, “you are too much…”? Disagreements can be resolved with empathy and acknowledgment of faults. Without it, the report is unhealthy.
You can’t be yourself
Are you afraid to give your opinion, to say what you think?
The other does not support certain aspects of your personality or certain of your activities which characterize the person you are?
You can’t modulate people, control their behavior, change them to be what you want them to be, or at least not without making them extremely unhappy.
We must accept others as they are, or move on. Otherwise, you risk slipping into a toxic relationship.
You pull yourself down
A healthy relationship, whether romantic, friendly or professional, should inspire us and bring out the best in everyone.
A lover, a relative or a friend must want your good and want to see you happy.
A manager or colleague should want you to perform at your best and feel fulfilled at work.
If you can’t do that and your dark sides come out when you’re with each other and vice versa, there’s a problem.