@elly.psychologist: It's very human to reach for an explanation when someone you love keeps hurting you. A label, a hard upbringing, a struggle with their mental health, any of these can make their behaviour feel more understandable and a little easier to live with. The trouble is that in a toxic relationship, the explanation can quietly become the thing that keeps you there. Understanding someone is a good thing when it sits alongside them owning what they do. Between two people who can both empathise and both take some responsibility, knowing where a partner's reactions come from helps you repair after a falling out and actually move forward. It changes completely when one person is repeatedly left hurt and the other can't see their part and keeps placing the blame elsewhere. Then the reason starts doing a different job. It becomes a cushion for them and a muzzle for you, a way of explaining why you shouldn't feel what you're feeling. Meanwhile the impact doesn't soften just because there's a story behind it. You're still being dismissed, still being left on your own with your feelings, still slowly losing your grip on who you are and what's real. None of this means having no compassion for what someone has been through. It means compassion was never meant to cost you your own wellbeing. A useful question when you're caught in a toxic relationship is to set the why to one side for a moment and look honestly at what is happening to you. How do you feel most days? How much of yourself have you had to shrink or hide? What have you stopped saying because it never goes anywhere? Those answers tell you far more than any diagnosis or backstory can. Seeing a toxic relationship for what it is doesn't automatically mean you have to leave tomorrow, and nobody can make that decision for you. What it does mean is that you can start making choices based on how things really affect you rather than on the reasons you've been given, and that's where protecting yourself begins. Whether you stay or go, you deserve to stop talking yourself out of your own pain, because naming the effect of a toxic relationship is what gives you room to look after yourself within it or beyond it Official accounts and resources: www.ellyanastasiades.com #toxic #toxicrelationship #toxicrelationshiprecovery #toxicrelationshipawareness #relationshiptok

Elly | Counseling Psychologist

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Monday 12 October 2026 16:50:00 GMT