Five Key Questions Help You Get Past A Bad Breakup

After a toxic relationship ends, we often find ourselves ruminating and feeling guilty over why we did not leave sooner. We may blame ourselves for trusting someone who was abusive and berate ourselves for not taking steps to end the relationship sooner. If this sounds like you, in this episode Life Coach Lisa A. Romano offers you 5 Key questions that can help you move beyond the bad breakup.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about five key questions that you can ask yourself to help you get past a toxic relationship.

Today we're talking about toxic relationships.

We're not talking about relationships in which it just doesn't work out.

You and your partner were not compatible.

You had different core values,

But you respected one another and you were able to mutually agree to end the relationship,

To consciously uncouple and become your own individual people and to move forward in life.

That actually happens in the best case scenarios.

We're talking about the types of relationships that bring out the worst in you and bring out the worst in your partner.

We're talking about the types of relationships that are about coercive control.

We're talking about the types of relationships where one of the partners is looking to dominate and control the other partner.

Make no mistake,

It's oftentimes the case where both people are trying to control one another which ends up being toxic.

You may have a partner in the relationship who has this fantasy around what a relationship is supposed to be.

You end up in a relationship with this person and you are not matching the fantasy that they have of a relationship in their head.

Because you are not validating them,

You're not appreciating them enough,

You're just not enough,

You're not making them feel good about themselves,

You get punished.

In this situation,

You will have someone in your life who nitpicks you,

Who consistently finds fault with you.

If you are a highly empathic person,

A very sensitive person,

You might be put in a position where you question yourself,

Where you think you're supposed to feel bad.

This partner who seems intelligent,

Charismatic,

And who has seen like they were really into you in the beginning of the relationship,

Over time has found nothing but flaws in you.

Like I said,

If you're a highly empathic person,

You might be someone who ends up feeling like the guilty way that you feel is your fault,

That it becomes your responsibility now to make this other person feel better about themselves,

Or it becomes your responsibility to convince them that you do care about them,

That you do appreciate them,

That you do love them.

Before long,

You are in a crazy making conversation with someone who doesn't see,

Or maybe they do.

But I would dare to say that lots of times people with high narcissistic traits really do believe that you're supposed to be catering to them.

They really do believe that you are supposed to be chasing after them.

They really do get offended when you are just yourself and they're looking for you to validate them and you just go off into another room.

They go off in a tangent or on a tangent accusing you of not caring about them,

Accusing you of not paying attention to them,

And so on.

And you could really get caught up in this crazy making conversation believing that you've done something terrible and you really haven't.

And so toxic relationships end up making you feel confused.

They end up making you feel guilt-ridden.

You feel like you're walking around on eggshells and the reason this is important to talk about,

At least in my opinion,

Is because if you're not careful,

You could end up in a position where you are walking around on eggshells,

But you're assuming blame for walking around on eggshells.

So it becomes your life quest to figure out how to convince this person that you love them.

And it becomes your life quest to figure out how to make this person happy.

And if you're dealing with someone who has terrible abandonment issues,

Who has a lot of shame in their background and maybe many insecurities,

They're looking to get their abandonment needs met through this relationship,

Although it's coming out sideways through dominance and control.

And of course,

When we're talking about narcissism,

We're talking about a personality that,

Or traits that exist on a spectrum.

Anybody can present with narcissistic traits.

And I would dare to say that we've all been narcissistic at one point in our life when we're very hurt,

We're very upset,

We may have misunderstood someone,

And we can get really upset and make everything that's happening about us.

I know that I'm guilty of that.

Luckily,

However,

I'm someone who's been able to look at that objectively and recognize that as a poor character trait and work on myself because I don't want people to walk around on eggshells around me.

And I certainly don't want to be someone who feels controlled by what's happening outside of me either.

And so it takes some personal development work,

A lot of spiritual growth,

And the intention of developing what I call a success mindset in spite of a painful past.

But when you're dealing with someone who is highly narcissistic,

They're not self-aware,

They have no intention of being self-aware,

And they really do believe that how they're feeling is because of something that you've done,

And you are responsible for figuring out how to make them not feel that way anymore.

And this can be really confusing.

And that's why I think it's important to talk about the symptoms of a toxic relationship where you feel like your entire world is now about trying to make this person happy.

You feel like you can do nothing right to make this person happy.

You feel very controlled by the relationship.

You've lost yourself in the relationship.

You had hobbies and you don't have them anymore.

The other thing that I think is important to mention that that might be something that you do,

That when you end up in a relationship,

You lose yourself in the relationship.

And that's something that you would have to work on.

And so a toxic relationship can be a relationship between two people who are highly codependent,

Two people that are looking to the other person to make them feel good about themselves.

Or you can be someone who is relatively healthy and you end up in a relationship with someone who's highly narcissistic,

Who is using the attachment that you have towards them against you.

They threaten you with abandonment.

They criticize you.

They gaslight you.

And because you care about this person and now you have a bond with this person,

The fear of them abandoning you will trigger you into trying to make them happy.

You end up in a trauma bonded situation.

You can be in a toxic relationship with someone who is highly narcissistic and you may end up having,

Or prior to the relationship itself,

You might be someone who presents with codependency because of childhood emotional neglect.

So you come into the relationship with poor boundaries.

You can end up in a relationship with the narcissist who breaks your boundaries down and confuses you to the point where you develop cognitive dissonance,

Or you can actually be someone,

And I relate to this,

As someone who comes into a relationship with very poor boundaries.

And so there are many ways to end up in a toxic relationship,

But for the purpose of this session,

I wanted to offer all of you the opportunity to ask yourself five key questions to help you move beyond a toxic relationship because we can develop a success mindset.

We can become self-actualized.

We can stay true to ourselves and develop life skills that allow us to grow,

To expand,

And to live amazing lives once we understand what we're dealing with.

And this can all happen in spite of a very difficult childhood.

It can happen in spite of a toxic relationship.

So the first question that you want to ask yourself,

Even though you won't feel like asking yourself this question,

It's important for you to ask yourself this question for the purpose of moving beyond the toxic relationship.

And the first question is,

What did this relationship teach me about myself?

What about this relationship has revealed to me things that I didn't understand before?

What have I learned about myself?

What has this relationship taught me?

Now the reason it's important to ask yourself this question is because we want to change the neural association that you have with the relationship.

Right now,

You might be somebody,

And I know that I went through this too,

And so many of my private coaching clients have this issue too,

Where I feel bad about myself for falling for this person.

So you have a negative self-perception attached to the relationship,

Which is only going to keep you stuck.

It's going to cause you to feel shame,

Cause you to feel guilt,

Cause you to feel embarrassment,

Essentially cause you to experience negative emotions when you think about this relationship.

That is not going to help you develop a success mindset and move past this relationship.

When you put a positive spin on it and you ask yourself,

Well,

What value has this toxic relationship now offered me?

Did I gain more information about myself?

Did I learn something about my childhood that I didn't know before?

Do I know something about myself that I can take into the future because of this relationship?

Now what's happening on a neurological and subconscious level is you are now experiencing a positive experience and emotion.

You're reframing the way your brain sees this experience.

You are taking control over the way that you see this experience.

You gain something from it,

So all was not lost.

So now when you think about the relationship,

If you think about this enough,

Then your brain will associate a positive experience with this toxic relationship,

Which will improve the way you feel about yourself,

Which will lift your esteem for self,

Lift your level of self-respect,

And will help you come out of this stuck place when you think about this toxic relationship.

The second question you want to ask yourself is,

What did this relationship teach me about interpersonal relationships that I didn't know before?

Again,

What we're trying to do is develop a success mindset around this toxic relationship.

We're trying to figure out,

How can I develop a positive reframe as it relates to how I feel about myself in this toxic relationship?

Because all too often when we get kicked out of a relationship like this,

We feel so bad about ourselves,

And that keeps us stuck.

That negative energy keeps us stuck.

That negative self-perception.

It also hinders our ability to trust the self in the future.

And so this is the mindset.

You're taking control over the way your brain is processing this relationship.

So you want to,

Again,

You're looking for a positive.

What do I now know about relationship dynamics that I didn't know before?

One of the things that I learned was that I went into a relationship when I was 21 and decided to get married.

I made this huge lifelong commitment when I,

In my opinion,

Was so young and so naive and knew nothing about interpersonal relationships.

And I assumed that going into the relationship,

Everyone thought the way that I did.

So I assumed that my ex-husband thought the way I did.

So I'm going to put you first.

I'm going to cater to your needs.

And certainly you'll do the same in return,

And we'll end up taking care of each other.

What I also learned eventually was that that is akin to codependency.

It was my job to take care of me.

It was my job to go into the relationship whole.

So what I learned was that I went into the relationship half a person thinking that if I focused on this other person,

This person would focus on me,

And somehow that would fill me up.

And so it really was,

It represented a level of immaturity that I didn't recognize in myself.

So when I thought about my marriage dissolving,

These are the types of questions that I asked myself to help me get past it,

Especially having three kids and bringing them through a war zone of a divorce.

That relationship taught me a ton about toxic relationships,

Not only about myself,

But also relationships.

Another way to turn a positive spin on this toxic relationship so that you can find value in it and not get stuck in the negative energy of it is by asking yourself,

Did this relationship bring out the best in me,

Or did it bring out the worst in me?

Did this relationship bring out the best in my partner,

Or did it bring out the worst in my partner?

Now,

Why would that be a really important question to present yourself,

To present your conscious mind,

To help reframe your subconscious mind?

Well,

We're trying to find value and we're trying to associate pleasure with good things and pain with not so good things.

In other words,

When your brain recognizes that,

Oh,

I was in a relationship with someone that brought out the worst in me,

That's bad.

Your brain now knows going into the future that if you're in a relationship with someone that brings out the worst in you,

That's a signal for you.

That's an internal reframe that is going to serve you in the future.

Now you know that when you're in a relationship or a friendship or whatever,

A partnership with someone that brings out the worst in you,

You know that that is not the best thing for you.

You know toxic relationship dynamics ahead.

So you can actually get out of that relationship sooner than later.

The brain can only play with the tools that are in the shed and if we're not identifying what's healthy and unhealthy,

Then our brain is at a disadvantage.

But when we consciously ask ourselves,

Did that relationship bring out the best in me or did it bring out the worst in me?

Now your brain knows that if you end up in a relationship with anyone,

Even a conversation with anyone,

And you know now because of the data you've represented to your brain with asking the question,

Is this bringing out the best in me and the worst in me?

Your brain now knows that that's a bad thing.

Your brain has a survival mechanism and it's trying to avoid things that you have determined are bad things.

So now in the future,

Rather than getting sucked into crazy making conversation,

You have more information.

Your brain now knows,

Uh-oh,

This feels like a rabbit hole.

I think I want to put the kibosh on this.

I think that I want to put up the stop sign.

I don't think I want to move further either in this conversation or in this relationship.

The fourth question that you want to ask yourself is,

What do I now know about myself and about relationships that I never want to experience again?

Because your brain needs to put a positive spin on the toxic relationship so that you find value in all of the pain that you've experienced rather than you sitting in the pain of the experience.

If you sit in the pain of the experience,

You're not going to move forward.

If you sit in the pain of the experience,

That's going to diminish your ability to trust the self in the future.

That's going to diminish your ability to make wise decisions in the future.

And unfortunately,

Based on the natural laws that govern time and space,

We generally attract what we think and we feel.

And we end up repeating the past until we break the patterns of the past.

These questions are helping you break the patterns of the past.

They're moving you beyond your limited conditioning.

You're moving beyond the rumination.

It's helping you get unstuck.

So we want to help your brain associate a benefit to this toxic relationship,

A benefit to an ending that you can free yourself of it,

Almost like you're rising up out of the ashes of it.

You're like,

Okay,

I see the value in this experience.

Even though it's painful,

This is what I'm taking from this experience.

And I'm bringing it into the future because I'm a wiser version of myself today.

So it's never going to happen again.

So asking yourself,

What do I never want to experience in a relationship again helps you feel like there was value to the experience,

Which will help you get unstuck.

In my situation,

When I realized that my ex-husband and I could have conversations until four o'clock in the morning that were circular,

That actually made no sense.

They were all about diversion.

They were about withholding.

And the wiser I got,

The more I saw what was happening,

The angrier I got because I felt stuck.

I didn't have the boundary to say,

This is toxic and I don't want to do this anymore.

That came 12 years later after three children.

And now part of my mission is to share this information with people so they don't have to go through what I went through and their children don't have to go through what I went through.

And if they do have to go through what I went through,

They have the language and the life skills to get through it quicker than what I did.

So when I realized I don't want to have circular,

Crazy conversations,

Crazy making conversations till four o'clock in the morning,

I made an oath to myself that that was dysfunctional.

So in the future,

If I ever saw that happening,

I knew that that was a red flag.

I knew that I was in a toxic relationship and I would be far better able to get out of it than end up in another 12 year long toxic relationship in the future.

Fifth question you want to ask yourself is,

What qualities in myself and in other people has this relationship revealed that I know that I have to change within myself and also avoid in other people?

Because let's face it,

The only person that you can change is yourself.

If you have a propensity to idealize people and then get really disappointed and you realize that that about yourself in this relationship,

That's super valuable information.

So now you can work on being more realistic.

You can work on being more fair minded.

You can work on not relying on a fantasy to make you feel good.

You can work on being more honest about what you've done in the past and how you fantasized around partners and you can be more vulnerable with a partner in the future.

If you're dealing with someone who is very enmeshing,

Someone who you meet and right away they're telling you that they love you,

They don't know you,

They want to move into your apartment right away,

They're making plans about having kids with you,

You know them two weeks,

They're talking about the vacations you're going to take in 10 years,

They're talking about the house that you're going to move into,

You don't know this person.

Now if you identify in that person because that's what you experienced in the toxic relationship that you're ending,

Then you know that that relationship,

The toxic relationship that you're leaving gave you information that you can use into the future that will prevent you from getting stuck in another toxic relationship.

So the benefit of asking yourself this question is identifying qualities in yourself as well as qualities in other people that represent a red flag.

And the red flag is red just like a stop sign is red,

Just like the red light of a traffic light is red,

It means stop.

When you're experiencing a red flag it means stop.

It doesn't even mean slow down,

It means stop.

It means pause.

It means hit the pause button.

Something's up,

There's something that you have to pay attention to.

And all too often those of us who end up in toxic relationships,

We're ignoring the red flags.

We're in the middle of the quicksand and the quicksand is getting thicker and thicker and pulling us down deeper and we don't know how to get out.

If you're lucky enough to be out of a toxic relationship,

Now is the time to start asking yourself questions that allow you to feel like you gained value from that relationship.

Rather than you feeling bad and guilty and ashamed of yourself,

You're going to spin this on its head and you're going to say,

No,

Those things happened for my benefit.

What did I gain?

What do I now know that I didn't know before?

And if you do this consistently,

You will fly from this toxic relationship,

Avoid them in the future and develop a success mindset in spite of a negative past.

I so hope this has been helpful.

Namaste everybody.

Until next time.

Bye now.

Reviews

Thank you for this! I am in the middle of leaving a toxic relationship and have made notes about the questions and will do the homework. I never want to be in this situation again. Thank you for your insights and heart🙏

Very insightful and helpful advice/reminder. Thank you 🙏

I really really needed this. Thank you

Thank you for your wisdom and good questions 💛

Again spot on and very, very enlightening 💪🏻

Great

great questions to ask oneself. even tho i’ve been married to an amazing man for 33 years these questions helped me get closure on old relationships. and like you said in your talk, they’re also good questions to ask about my friendships. thank you for continuing to open my eyes ✨💜✨💜✨

I love this 🙌❤️ Thank you 🙏❤️