Toxic vs. Healed…
Of course I am gonna talk about relationships. There are very different behaviors evinced from the differing places we come from on our journey toward wholeness.
I was listening to this podcast the other day and this man was talking about his experience with healed women vs. toxic ones. He had a lot to say but it all boils down to one major difference: toxic women continue the dialogue/healed women do not. (This would apply to men too, he was just talking about his own personal experience with women).
Toxic craves to continue the conflict: to repeat, revisit and reconstruct the pain. I think a lot of toxic behavior seeks resolution but the manner in which it is rolled out and then acted upon assures no real resolution ever comes. You just keep getting more of the same. And the more you engage, the worse it gets. It is never going to be resolved with that person because the whole connection isn’t really connection, it is just a trauma bond that can never be worked out or resolved, only revisited and repeated.
Healed, no matter how hard the pain and anguish, ends the contact. No snarky text messages, no voicemails, no emails, no DMs. Contact is cut even though the feelings, thoughts, longings and hurts live on. It isn’t like when you cut contact you magically stop thinking about the person. To the contrary, the cutting of contact often makes you think about the person more: it takes a lot of energy to push something away from you. More than it takes to just allow it back in, most especially if it is really trying hard to get back into your orbit and it is hot or cute or DTF.
But healed means that you assess the situation for what it is, own your part and trust that you gave it your best shot and perhaps so did the other person, and now there is nothing else to do but walk away. Like fast, and burn all exits that lead to you while you are doing it. It is not easy to cut communication. It isn’t easy to move on. It isn’t easy to lick your wounds in the silence of your solitude. But it is really the only way toxicity can wane and healing can begin.
It is not easy to cut someone off you care about. And just because this particular situationship is not good for you, doesn’t mean that real feelings, longings, desires and the like are not involved. It is hard to walk away. But engaging further will only bring more of what you have already been getting, or in most cases what you have not been getting.
Healing takes providing a space for yourself to actually heal. You cannot heal when you are mired in the dysfunction. You cannot heal when you have some toxic person altering your reality all the time, gaslighting you, stonewalling you and manipulating your feelings, hopes, desires and ultimately your reality. Healing is going to require some time to reflect, some time to think but not act. Healing actually requires a great deal of pausing on that great idea or that thing you just HAVE to say. Healing really does require sitting on your hands and waiting for something other than the toxic involvement to exist in your interior.
That is the difference between healed and toxic, toxic will always leave the door open for more bullshit and healing does not. Healing blocks the number if it needs to, although sometimes in the healing process blocking isn’t required. You are so done that it does not matter what the person says, you will not jump back in for anything. Your inner peace and self love has replaced whatever dopamine hit you received from whatshername or whatshisname.
I was super blocking resistant for a long time. And I realize now it was because I didn’t want the drama to end. I wanted the shitshow to play out a little longer because, well, that seemed like a good idea. Or it was exciting. Or I was bored. Or I had nothing better to do. So many fucked up things have garnered my attention because I was not stimulated enough in my own life that engaging with a whole bunch of bullshit with him seemed like entertainment for a minute. And it was entertaining, I mean if you call dumpster fires and train wrecks entertaining.
Now I block. I don’t ask questions, I don’t give a heads up. I just simply block and then move on with my life. Sure there is some hard work I have to do to not unblock or go pick another one just like the one I just blocked. But the blocking provides me safety and respite, if only from my self. I am the most dangerous thing I know…always have been, always will be. Saddest part of that is that I am mostly a danger to myself…others fare far better than I do when mired in my toxicity.
So this hard concept of healed vs. toxic isn’t really all that hard at all. It is really simple. When you want to heal, leave, cut off communication and isolate yourself from the object of your obsession. The more you engage with it, the worse it is for everyone. The game playing and back and forth is a breeding ground for pain, loss, illness, toxicity and anything but healing. Healing requires peace, solitude, reflection and time for the fast twitched pace of toxic engagement to dissipate.
And I will add, if you are dealing with a narcissist, the ONLY way to heal is to cut off all communication. And that is a bitch if you share children together. Then you can minimize the struggle with appropriate help and coaching, but you are gonna be in it for the long haul when you share kids with someone like that. It sucks. I know (professionally, not personally).
So if you want to heal, block, cut off the communication, drama and the like. Sit with your hurt, your pain, your loss and your longing. Find out where it comes from and why you think this particular version of shitshow will ever be able to provide you safety and peace. Then do the inner work to change what is attractive to you. Heal your own wounds and then others wounds will not be so attractive. And you will not end up married off to someone who is just festering their own toxicity and gushing it all over you. It would be really hard to get well or healed or clean when you have literally married yourself off to that.
If you want help, I know the way out. Happy to help.
If you want to keep trying, I wish you all the best. But I will end this with: nothing changes, if nothing changes.
Again…still.
