Healing from Toxic Relationships
By Jenny Peterson
Ask anyone healing from an abusive or toxic relationship, and one word comes up again and again: confusion.
Not just heartbreak — confusion.
It’s the kind of relationship built on emotional inconsistency, a lack of accountability, blame-shifting and a slow erosion of one person’s sense of self. Over time, someone starts questioning everything: their memory, their reactions, their worth, and eventually, their reality.
They begin to believe they are responsible for the other person’s anger, moods, hostility or explosive behavior. If they try to express hurt, they’re often met with defensiveness, teasing disguised as jokes, or accusations that they are the real problem.
By the time the relationship ends, many people say they no longer recognize themselves.
While “healing” is a word often used after breakups and divorce, it carries a different weight when someone is leaving a toxic dynamic. Whether it’s romantic, familial, friendship-based, or even a workplace relationship, the damage often runs deeper than people realize.
“When I think about a toxic relationship, I think less about labels and more about how the relationship feels over time,” said Catherine Rousselle, a therapist with the Charleston Department of Mental Health who also sees clients in private practice at Mount Pleasant-based Nid & Co. Counseling.
“It’s usually not one big moment—it’s a pattern. People often describe feeling like they’re walking on eggshells, second-guessing themselves or slowly losing their sense of confidence and clarity.”
That “walking on eggshells” feeling is often one of the clearest signs. People become hyper-aware of another person’s moods, trying to prevent conflict before it starts. They shrink themselves to keep the peace.
“Many people describe feeling like they’ve ‘lost their voice’ in the relationship,” Rousselle said. “That’s often one of the clearest signs of a toxic dynamic — when it no longer feels safe to think, feel, or speak freely.”
Healing After a Toxic Relationship
People leaving toxic relationships often experience the same grief as any breakup, but with an added layer of shame.
In healthier relationships, endings may come from different life goals, incompatibility, or changing feelings. In toxic relationships, the ending is often about survival.
Someone spent months, years — sometimes decades — trying to twist themselves into a pretzel — only to be met with more resentment, criticism, manipulation and emotional harm.
Leaving can feel devastating, but it also brings uncomfortable questions: Why did I stay? Why did I think this was acceptable? Why did I believe I didn’t deserve better?
That shame is common, but therapists say it’s often rooted in much older patterns.
“Many people are surprised to realize that some of these patterns started much earlier in life, especially within family systems, and then show up again later in relationships because they feel familiar,” Rousselle said.
Dr. Dorree Lynn, a relationship expert, therapist and author with a Charleston-area practice, says one of the first steps in recovery is rebuilding what the relationship slowly took away.
“The first part of healing is regaining one’s self-esteem because you have been beaten down,” Dr. Lynn said. “In the dynamic, something was always your fault.”
This is where therapy — and often no contact — becomes essential.
Healing from a toxic relationship is about understanding why the relationship happened in the first place and how not to repeat it.
“There’s usually a lot underneath — feelings like self-doubt, confusion, fear, and a loss of trust in one’s own instincts,” Rousselle said. “Working with someone who understands toxic dynamics — especially patterns associated with narcissistic or emotionally manipulative relationships — can be incredibly important, because these patterns often go unrecognized for a long time.”
She adds that once someone understands the signs of a toxic relationship, they begin to see the patterns more clearly, not just in the relationship itself, but in the emotional responses and cycles that follow.
“That level of insight can be a turning point in helping someone move from confusion and self-doubt into clarity, validation and real healing,” Rousselle said.
Understanding Trauma Bonds
Trauma bonds are one of the most misunderstood parts of toxic relationships. They form through cycles of emotional highs and lows: hurt followed by affection, cruelty followed by apology, rejection followed by reassurance. That inconsistency creates powerful emotional attachment.
It’s why so many survivors ask the same painful question: Why do I miss someone who hurt me?
Dr. Lynn said that’s one of the most common reactions she sees.
“I have rarely seen someone leave this type of relationship without wondering, ‘How could I have stayed in this? What else could I have done?’” she said.
But for those still searching for the perfect thing they could have said or done to fix it, she offers a difficult truth: “Somebody who doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with how they’ve been treating someone else won’t change,” Dr. Lynn said.
Following a breakup, there’s often grief not just for the relationship, but for the person someone became inside it. There can also be guilt, loneliness and even a sense of withdrawal.
Because emotional abuse is often difficult to explain, friends and family may not fully understand what happened. Sometimes they only saw the charming version of the partner, which can leave survivors feeling even more isolated and unsure of their own reality.
As healing begins, people start noticing patterns — not just in the relationship, but in themselves. They recognize what felt familiar, what they tolerated and how blurred boundaries allowed harmful dynamics to continue.
“This is usually where the deeper work happens,” Rousselle said.
That work can be uncomfortable. It may involve looking at old wounds around abandonment, self-worth, or the belief that love must be earned through over-giving, over-functioning or self-sacrifice.
It also means learning boundaries — something many people were never taught clearly.
“In many toxic dynamics, those lines become blurred over time,” Rousselle said. “Especially in the presence of a trauma bond, the other person may take advantage of that in ways that are subtle and difficult to recognize while someone is still in the relationship.”
Rebuilding Self-Trust
One of the most important parts of healing is also the hardest: self-compassion.
“So many people are incredibly hard on themselves for staying as long as they did or not seeing it sooner,” Rousselle said. “But when you really understand these dynamics, it makes sense why it was hard to leave.”
Replacing self-blame with understanding is where real healing starts. It’s seeing that emotional abuse happens in covert ways. It isn’t always screaming or obvious cruelty. Sometimes it looks like disrespect disguised as humor, getting caught in a lie and somehow ending up apologizing, or being slowly convinced that your instincts can’t be trusted.
“It becomes as if the abuser is the only voice of reason and it slowly devolves into that they’re the ones that define you,” Dr. Lynn said. “You have to ask yourself, ‘Why did you give them that status?’”
That shift is subtle, and it often deepens after a trauma bond has already formed.
“Toxic relationships don’t usually break someone all at once—they slowly disconnect them from their sense of self,” Rousselle said. “Learning how to replace that self-blame with understanding is a huge part of the healing process.”
It’s a slow process. It looks like reconnecting with old hobbies, making decisions without panic, setting boundaries and holding them, and learning to trust your own instincts again.
“There’s a lot of self-forgiveness and self-love,” Dr. Lynne said. “You stayed for a reason — whether it’s hope, or fear, or a desire for change — but the first thing is to forgive yourself.”
Sometimes healing is simply realizing you no longer have to explain your feelings, apologize for your needs or earn basic kindness.
“A big part of the work is helping people reconnect with their own voice again,” Rousselle said. “Learning to identify what they feel, what they need and what matters to them without immediately overriding it.”
The good news is that healing doesn’t just return people to who they were before. Often, it creates something stronger.
“Over time, people don’t just get back to who they were — they often develop a stronger, more grounded sense of self than they had before,” Rousselle said. “Healing isn’t just about leaving the relationship — it’s about finding your way back to yourself.”
