5 Steps how to let go of unhealthy relationships

To have good relationships with others, it all starts with having a good relationship with yourself. If you have old wounds and traumas stuck as information in your cells in your body and mind, then your foundation is not healthy and thus the relationships you will encounter will reflect this unhealthy relationship you have with yourself.

In the grand scheme, it’s important to understand that any situation we find ourselves in, being in our childhood, teenage years or adulthood are always allowing us to learn something and grow as a soul even if they are very unpleasant. We develop the foundation of our behavioral characteristics, habits, ways of being and future relationships based on the environment we grow up in. The way a person has relationships being romantic ones, friendships or any type of social interactions with others, is strongly impacted by the relationship we had with our own family growing up.

Any kind of trauma and wounds we might have experienced early on, if they’re left unresolved, they will repeat themselves throughout our lives expressed in different type of relationships and situations until we decide to look at the root cause of the issue. Therefore, in this article I will discuss 5 different steps how to let go and heal from unhealthy relationships.

Since every external experience in your life is a reflection of what it looks like internally within you, you will find yourself in environments, expressed through different people, different romantic partners, friends or social environments which reflect unhealthy environments or behaviors you were around growing up. Until you have learnt the lesson and you truly have had enough and start facing your internal trauma, in order to heal and no longer vibrate on the frequencies which keep brining you the same repeating situations just expressed in another situation.

Before you do anything in life, starting a new relationship, starting a family, even opening a business, it is crucial to have a strong solid foundation, thus to truly love and value yourself. In case you have inner trauma, it is so important to HEAL yourself, otherwise it will just cause ongoing damage. Remember, everything external in your life is a reflection of how it looks like within you internally. So, to change the experience you are having externally, change all that which is going on internally, which means accepting and acknowledging all the unhealed trauma within, facing each wound, heal your inner child, understanding where those who caused you pain come from and that they are simply unhealed people themselves, heal so much that you can send them love and before doing anything in life learn to love yourself truly!

1. Acknowledge and accept each unhealed trauma within

You might have buried away extremely painful situations. By doing so you constantly have anger, rage, hate, destructive behaviors, which are all expressions of low vibrational feelings residing within you for so many years. The unfortunate part is, the only person feeling all this rage and anger and hurt is you, not the people who caused you the situations making you feel like this. So know, that anger you hold onto is like poison you are willingly consuming.

The first step is to become honest and humble with yourself and accept all of these uncomfortable situations. Accept that they happened. Write down each situation which comes to mind, no matter how painful this is. You will have a list of everything damaging in your life that you now can start addressing.

2. Face and feel each trauma

Now that you have a list (and mind me, constantly adapt and grow this list, until there is no more pain lingering around, which can take years). Look at each trauma, cry, be angry, allow yourself to feel what you felt in the situation. Scream and say the things you wanted to say to the person hurting you. This might mean you have to re-live situations, but let them come up and FEEL everything you felt and EXPRESS that feeling. Often, you were not allowed to express how you felt towards horrible situations as a young child, so now it’s time to re-live being that little child and giving yourself permission and allowing to feel what you felt then, as the only way to remove something is to face it and feel it in order to heal it and to be able to let it go.

3. Heal your inner child

Wounds which repeat themselves in life, often stem from the younger you having had to suppress true feelings and painful situations. In order to heal current wounds, it’s necessary to go back to healing the initial cause of the wounds which most likely happened when you were a kid. Hug yourself, give your inner child the love it needed at that moment by talking out loud or writing a letter and telling your younger you all the things you needed to hear back then. Tell your younger you you’re protected, safe, loved and its not your fault for how others treated you. Give your young you everything you needed back then. Learn to be the parent you needed, the love you needed growing up. Do work on your inner child and give your inner child all the love it needed.

This practice is best done alone somewhere in solitude, when you can be so humble and honest with yourself where no one can see or hear you. And have patience with yourself, these practices take time.

4. Understand where the person who inflicted pain onto you comes from to truly let go

The people who inflict pain on others are merely in pain themselves. Which is why it is so important before you do anything in life to fix your base and foundation. Know that anyone who treats you unkindly, is full of sadness and horror inside within them.

Become aware that those people who caused pain onto you were unhealed people themselves. They most likely had horrible things happen in their lives and they never healed. They kept all the pain in. Maybe they did not have the environment to heal, nor were they strong enough to get themselves out of these environments to heal. Look at their lives so you can understand they are hurt little children who never healed.

When you go through the previous healing stages, the anger and hate towards those who harmed you and caused you so much pain disappears, because when you have done the internal healing, you can then understand the perspective of those who hurt you. You can honestly see all their damage and unhealed parts and how those parts were expressed through their actions.

So, you will eventually even feel love and wish love and healing towards these people, as they need it the most.

5. Learn to love yourself

Only when you truly love yourself and know your worth and treat yourself accordingly, that’s when the external world will treat you accordingly too. As everything external in your life truly is a reflection of how it looks like within you internally, if you want to experience harmonious loving relationships it all starts with yourself. Love yourself for another to love you, know your worth for another to know your worth. Do all the things you once “expected” from another to do for you by yourself. Treat yourself to nice things which make you happy, take yourself out on dates, go on holidays alone, go on the adventures alone. Do it all alone, and love yourself and your own company so much that you will know when someone is in your environment and treats you less than you deserve, that you immediately notice and they automatically fall away from your life.

All of this, easier said than done, but it is possible to completely change the way you experience life and the people you interact with by changing how it looks like internally within you.

Do know, that life will in a sense “test” you when you are on this healing journey. You will have people come into your life who reflect these previous unhealthy relationships and it is up to you to notice them, and with your new formed awareness, healed parts of you and love towards yourself, it is your responsibility to not allow these kinds of people in your life. And do not forget, unhealed people will try to come into your life as they are in desperate need of the healing you have done, yet its important for you to have yourself and own wellbeing as priority.

Having said all of this, in life we should live to thrive and not live to survive. And remember, in the end of the day, its all just experiences allowing you to grow as a soul, and we are given in life what we can handle because we are strong enough.

Sending you so much love and courage!

We are generation change!

Enjoy, yours truly

© Isabel