Leaving a toxic relationship is hard
Leaving an emotionally abusive relationship is more difficult than your well-meaning friends and family may believe. While they can see what's going on, down in the trenches, it feels different.
What feels safe to someone who grew up in a good enough environment feels scary and strange to someone who grew up in a chaotic one. Because it's what her body knows and is used to, she feels comfortable in the arms that bring the familiar chaos into her life. An abusive partner takes advantage of her brain's wiring to attach to people who are bad for her, as well as of her childhood belief and dream that her love can make everything better. It's no surprise that we get into these biochemical addiction dynamics that are so difficult to break free from with foundations like this.
The brain reacts to tumultuous relationships in a similar way to how it reacts to chemical dependencies. It's not easy to walk away. After investing time and emotions into your partner, there's a cognitive dissonance problem - you don't want to believe who this person really is. The long term conditioning, gaslighting, and intermittent reinforcement buried your self-trust and intuition. Your decision making, cognitive functions parts of the brain are offline from living in a trauma response, and the increased activity of your emotional parts makes the decision to walk away almost impossible to make.
There's a cognitive dissonance problem after investing time and emotions in your partner; you don't want to believe who this person truly is. Your self-trust and intuition got buried under long-term conditioning, gaslighting, and intermittent reinforcement. Your decision making, cognitive functions parts of the brain are offline from living in a trauma response, and the increased activity of your emotional parts makes the decision to walk away almost impossible to make.
His erratic behaviour makes you wonder if it's really him, or if he's right and you're the issue. Then there's the most terrifying possibility of all: he moves on to someone else and gives her everything you ever wanted from him. The very reason this is terrifying is that you began to view yourself as he painted you: worthless, helpless, and undeserving of better.
The longer you stay in a situation where you have to work hard for love, the more that programming is reinforced in your mind. Because your subconscious is continuously listening and registering that you are your last priority, you are starving your self-worth and self-respect of oxygen.
With so many choices being taken away from you by the abuse, the choice to walk away must come from you. I am here to help you heal from the fresh wounds and the ones that never healed in the first place.