When I work with people who are overcoming a destructive relationship there’s commonly healing work to be done in building self-foundations as I call it. That really taking time to feel the tough to face pain which we’d rather gloss over to allow ourselves to recognise it’s realness. When we’ve been in a relationship which has caused distress, we can be so used to carrying the other person’s baggage we can lose total sense of ourselves. It’s like we have been swept away by a whirlwind temporarily and then have come crashing back down to earth. Other analogies people tell me are like being on a rollercoaster. 

When we get off the rollercoaster ride there can be a strong mixture of emotions. Things like grief, trauma, and not uncommonly a strange kind of relief mixed in. We got out before it was too late. It’s often this last one people find the hardest to accept in themselves funnily enough. 

People typically seek to be in relationships, and I find that healing can be something of a dance between getting our own self foundations back through our journaling, meditation, time with friends, and this meeting new people. 

There are learning experiences from the respective ex. Usually realising red flags, I won’t do that again kind of things. Sometimes but not always the healing work involves a healing of actual patterns going back to our own childhood. 

If there’s a general trick of the trade to implement here it would be to try to enter new relationships as consciously as possible. Whether you’ve needed to do healing work from your family of origin or not there are common experiences of recognising how we maybe let things slide which we wish we hadn’t in retrospect.  

There’s natural emotions and biology mixed in with any relationships and I don’t believe we can ever be totally pragmatic, but one therapist said about the move from being reactive to being more responsible (which she split into ‘response – able’). 

Sometimes when people go through self-recovery, they recognise that they have been on a kind of autopilot. A roller door kind of thinking and making more kneejerk reactions rather than conscious decisions. This is commonly the case when the person has had certain dysfunctional family dynamics from their family of origin. Regardless of if this is the case or if the now past romantic relationship was just an unusual more one-off event the trick seems to follow a similar process something like: 
 
1. Building/rebuilding our own self connection and self-foundations  

2. Practicing the appropriate communication with others 

It’s mainly from number 1 here in building our new self-connections which allows us to enter new relationships more consciously. A Therapist I knew always used to say ‘don’t should on yourself’. You’d be surprised about how many people do this even in subtle ways. I’d invite you to think about if you do it. I should be more like this or that. Notice if you do these things to cover up your own truth. 

It’s in this rebuilding of foundations process where we can grow to a healthier sense of self-esteem. One of which we can be with and learn to trust our own internal guidance system. To give yourself permission to recognise if something feels a bit off (self-relationship) and then to decide whether you either pull a bit away from the person (clinical communication practice) or have a discussion with them (adult communication practice). 

The point is whichever communication you choose to use with the other person doesn’t matter if it is empowered and from a response able (conscious) place, and this is the thing. It’s just the practice of learning to be more conscious in your relationships. 

There’s a lovely book I’ve sometimes recommended to clients, it’s called ‘It’s just a date’. I found this a nice book and I’d recommend this to anyone now looking to build healthier relationships and to be more conscious in their new dating life following a less than constructive relationship. 

How conscious do you feel you are in your relationships right now ? 

Reach out if I can help. 

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All the best 

Phil 

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