They Might Be Toxic, A Little Book About Toxic Relationships

January 1, 2023 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

I wrote They Might Be Toxic after experiencing years of repeated patterns of toxic relationships. I’ve been a lifelong learner, and a teacher, so for me, sharing about this subject was only natural.

As a 19-year old I fell into a whirlwind romance, dated this stranger for a mere six months, then left my home in Laramie Wyoming to move to California. Within the first six months of marriage I knew something wasn’t right, but years of toxic programming from our media, friends and family kept me trying to make it work for five years. “Every couple fights. You guys seem so happy.” Even the idea of the whirlwind romance, at some point must be questioned.

I left in the year 2000 – so even if you were to see a therapist, unless you did a really deep dive at the library, and happened to stumble on the right books, you might learn about these patterns, but it was highly unlikely. Now, we can put a question into YouTube and watch an hour-long presentation from a doctor or therapist.

Only in my late 30s and early 40s did I discover the language of codependency and Complex PTSD in Pete Walker’s Book, CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Also at this time, the book The Body Keeps The Score gained popularity. I have years of repressed memory that I have no desire to delve into, but my body remembers.

Each time I am exposed to toxic people I begin having C-PTSD symptoms or ‘emotional flashback’ – the tendency to become emotionally dysregulated when exposed to a similar pattern that reminds you of the past.

Essentially the emotional reaction seems exaggerated in comparison with what’s actually happening because quite literally the body is keeping score. When the body doesn’t feel safe it immediately tries to prepare for whatever danger it anticipates.

This is commonly known as the fight or flight response, which is quite useful if we’re running from a bear. However, if the bear comes home every night, or we work with them every day the physical body can become chronically dysregulated.

As the years of jargon and psychobabble explain away my experiences in my mind I realize that people need a VERY simple way to learn about this. Not everyone has time for hours of lecture and deep dive of how the body functions under stress – they simply need a very clear Step 1: Am I in a toxic situation?

By identifying patterns of behavior, both our own and the patterns in our choice of relationships we can begin to discover what role we’ve played in this very elegant dance.

Every buyer needs a seller, and every victim needs a false rescue. The victim hopefully and eventually discovers the deep disappointment of giving their power away. Unfortunately, even once we exit toxic relationships our early patterning can often lead us back to new ones, over and over. If you’ve ever heard someone say “I dated the same person over and over again, just with a different name,” you might know the pattern I’m referring to.

Even when we try to stay out of romantic partnerships, the patterns might creep in with sibling relationships, other family relationships, and at work. The patterns can also be present with the friends we choose, or even the beliefs we hold, i.e., ‘The world is out to get me, men/women are under attack.”

Because we are so comfortable with this pattern of abuse, even outside of toxic relationships we begin to be our own abusers, and we might notice self-talk like “You’re such an idiot, of course you messed up.”

Being able to identify toxic patterns in our relationships can help us to avoid toxic stress. The long-term overexposure to cortisol literally acts as a neurotoxin in the brain. Once stress is at this level we begin to experience digestive issues, and then all of the compounding things from those. Childhood adversity leads to adulthood adversity, which is why in Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris’ TED Talk “How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime” – we learn that just 4 traumatic events in childhood leads to illness and increased suicidality in adulthood.

These don’t have to be ‘BIG’ events – things that happen every day for children like bullying at school or from siblings, divorce, physical trauma or illness, poverty onto the bigger and more obvious traumas like physical abuse, neglect and sexual abuse.

When I was in my abusive marriage I was belittled for reading or learning, and especially for writing. At that time, I turned to art since my partner wouldn’t have an interpretation of what I was creating, and therefore had fewer nasty things to say – at least about my creativity.

The only private time I had was at work during my breaks, and even then, he often picked me up for lunch because we shared a vehicle. I wrote this book to be read in under an hour. Each chapter comes with journal prompts so that you can begin to ask yourself questions about the quality of the situation or relationship you find yourself in.

This book is intended to help readers identify patterns in themselves and in their relationships, and is mostly formatted in bullet points and lists. It contains very little storytelling, but instead attempts to allow you to see your own story, so that you can get in the driver’s seat and write a new ending.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maria Colomy is the Author of They Might Be Toxic, and one of the co-founders of the “They Might Be Toxic” podcast and brand. Maria has had a vast, colorful career that always involved writing. She has also had a colorful life, that often involves toxic relationships and the continuing realization that much like art, or writing, managing our relationships is also a skill that we need to constantly improve.

Follow her on Twitter @TheyMightBToxic

THEY MIGHT BE TOXIC

A quick easy guide to help you identify unhealthy patterns in your relationships by looking at:

Similar relationship patterns at work, home, and in the family.
How much freedom and autonomy you have within the context of a relationship.
How you are spoken to.
The launguage of abuse.
Phrases or insults that replay in your head.

This book is for everyone because abusive relationships exist everywhere. Whether at work or at home, whether a family member or a person you’ve hired the patterns of abusive relationships are common. A toxic relationship can rob you of your joy and take an enourmous amount of energy.

This guide will help you begin to untangle the toxic relationships in your life by empowering you to see them for what they are.

BUY HERE

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