After a breakup we can often be left feeling hurt, shocked, and lost.
How can we heal our souls after a romantic relationship goes toxic? When it comes to a broken heart, the pain can be so real you wonder how you can ever pick up all the pieces. The toxic relationship has to be healed on several levels.
It was December 2002 and I was overcoming a big breakup. I was flying back from London, England, a young, bright-eyed and bushy tailed college student listening to Christina Aguilera on her headphones. My soul was so bright and I couldn’t see how I was allowing the toxic in.
My heart was hurt and I was pretty certain I was never going to love again. Listening to Aguilera on my diskman, her words spoke directly to my soul:
“I was naive, your love was like candy
Artificially sweet, I was deceived by the wrapping.
Got caught in your web and I learned how to bleed.
I was prey in your bed and devoured completely.
Oh, and it hurts my soul ’cause I can’t let go
All these walls are caving in
I can’t stop my suffering…
I hate to show that I’ve lost control, ‘cause I keep going right back
To the one thing that I need
To walk away from.”
Toxic Relationships and Addiction
The relationship had been toxic from the beginning. Like Aguilera said, “artificially sweet.” He had been cheating on me the whole time. I even knew about it and still I stayed, because I was sure no one else would love me. At least I had someone. It was better than nothing right?
A sickly sweet, toxic relationship can draw you in like an addiction. You keep feeding the addiction, certain that it must be right even when it feels wrong. I still remember sitting on that plane back from London rehearsing what I was going to say to him when I saw him. I was going to tell him how much he hurt my heart and let him know that I didn’t deserve to be treated like that. That I was a queen.
But when it came time to see him the words came out wrong. Instead I told him I loved him and I needed him. In return he told me he was in love with someone else and my time away had made him realize that. That’s when it really broke. My heart, left in shambles as I scrambled to try to pick up the pieces. I felt so foolish and stupid. But above all I felt completely lost and alone.
When It Breaks, You See Yourself
Relationships – especially unhealthy or toxic relationship – can be all consuming. Your life begins to revolve around each other. Weekends together, sharing a bed, and being intimate lead to spending all your moments together, and soon you forget what life was like before the relationship. Questions like, “Who am I?” Or “What do I want?” Start to be replaced with, “What does he want?” Or “What are WE doing this weekend?”
A break up is your divine gift, a chance to take a look at your SOUL.
It is incredibly important to practice self reflection, contemplation, and personal development after a breakup, otherwise you will continue the patterns and attract another partner exactly like the one who just left.
Book a free call with me and let’s get over this breakup
I jumped from relationship to relationship with plenty of toxic men until I had a profound realization: It wasn’t the rotten men, it was my rotten self esteem! I was attracting what I thought I deserved. So I spent months in healing, I wrapped myself in a cocoon and surrounded myself with friends and family, I went to counseling, and I focused on my own health. It takes a while for the toxicity to leave, but when it finally does you can see yourself again.
Questions come up like, “Who am I?”And “what do I deserve”
You Are a Magnet, What You Feel You Attract
When you recognize what vibrational messages you are sending the Universe, you can’t complain about the cards you are being dealt. So if you are saying, “I don’t deserve to be treated nice. I am desperate, I’ll take anything. It’s okay if he is cheating. It’s okay if he verbally abuses me. I’ll take any man. Just give me a man.” Then that is exactly what you are going to get.
You have to be so careful with you INNER messages: what you are saying about yourself and what you are calling into your realm.
As part of your spiritual healing after a break up, start by asking yourself: “Why was I attracting this kind of man? What part of me was toxic?”
Practice Celibacy and Cleansing
When alcoholics go through the twelve step program with Alcoholics Anonymous, they are advised to practice abstinence from all substances. Just the same way when you are overcoming a toxic relationship, you must give it all up. The only way to avoid continuing your toxic habits is to be completely removed from it all.
Sex is sacred and divine, and your body is your sacred vehicle, so until you can learn to treat it with respect, you must avoid all contact with sexual partners.
Additionally, it helps to begin cleansing yourself of old energy and toxic leftovers. It can be helpful to do some deeper healing work like Reiki or energy healing. You can also opt for doing something like a yoni steam or massage. Use sage or palo santo or incense to cleanse yourself or your house of toxic energy.
You can also do some spring cleaning with your stuff. Remove all reminders of the ex from your home. During the full moon, you can take time to ceremoniously write down all that you wish you to let go of and then burn it.
Talking to someone is so helpful and whether that person is a counselor or spiritual life coach, you will feel a big burden lifted from your chest when you can dig deeper and let go of some of these emotions.
Book a free 15 minute chat with me and let’s move through this together
Time to Start Again
I absolutely love this quote, “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” Remember that just because it is the end doesn’t mean it is over. In life, we see so much beauty in new life and new beginnings but we often see death as such an ugly, scary thing.
Yoga teaches us to honor “little-deaths,” those are the things that no longer serve us, the relationships that aren’t meant to continue, the dead leaves on a house plant. When we embrace the death, the ending, the breakup, and step into the new light we can now begin again with a new day ahead of us.
So is it time for you to start again? Only you know the answer to that question. But you will know when it is time to shed the old and emerge refreshed and brand new.
I still remember that step, starting again. Picking myself up and walking away from him.
That young college student wearing chucks and listening to Christina Aguilera is now a full grown woman with a loving husband and a family of her own. My home is full of love and I have done work – the deep spiritual work to get over the toxic I used to know.
I’m not perfect, I’m a work in progress. But after all these years I finally know…
I AM a Queen and I only allow Kings into my realm.
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