Toxic Relationship VS a Healthy Relationship + Handling Triggers
Jan 15, 2024
Maria Fuentes
This week, we're discussing how to tell the difference between a healthy relationship that inspires growth and a toxic one that hinders it. It can be tough to recognize toxicity when we're in it, leading to self-doubt. Drawing from personal experiences, I highlight the importance of this conversation. Remember, all relationships can trigger us, even the good ones. Our triggers come from our own wounds, and it's crucial to take responsibility for them. Join me as we explore using triggers as guidance, knowing when to step away from toxicity, and staying empowered in creating healthy relationships.
Lets dive into this week's episode!
As I mentioned in the episode I am offering 90 min coaching intensives with a 3-month follow-up plan. Since I am so grateful to have you all as listeners I am doing a 50% off these intensives for you all with no time limit. If you feel that this is the time for you to dive into emotional healing and create the relationship you want click on the link below.
If you enjoyed this episode Hit the subscribe button for updates, and if you love this podcast, please leave a review. Your feedback helps other women like you discover and benefit from it.
Unlock your true potential with our FREE Rediscover Worksheet tool! This simple tool will guide your self-discovery journey, helping you uncover your authentic self and regain personal power. Download now and start your transformation today!- https://mailchi.mp/mariafuentes/rediscover-yourself-the-muse
For personalized 1:1 coaching, visit Maria’s website at mariafuentes.net or email her at info@mariafuentes.net for guidance.- https://mariafuentes.net/
This week, we're discussing how to tell the difference between a healthy relationship that inspires growth and a toxic one that hinders it. It can be tough to recognize toxicity when we're in it, leading to self-doubt. Drawing from personal experiences, I highlight the importance of this conversation. Remember, all relationships can trigger us, even the good ones. Our triggers come from our own wounds, and it's crucial to take responsibility for them. Join me as we explore using triggers as guidance, knowing when to step away from toxicity, and staying empowered in creating healthy relationships.
Lets dive into this week's episode!
As I mentioned in the episode I am offering 90 min coaching intensives with a 3-month follow-up plan. Since I am so grateful to have you all as listeners I am doing a 50% off these intensives for you all with no time limit. If you feel that this is the time for you to dive into emotional healing and create the relationship you want click on the link below.
If you enjoyed this episode Hit the subscribe button for updates, and if you love this podcast, please leave a review. Your feedback helps other women like you discover and benefit from it.
Unlock your true potential with our FREE Rediscover Worksheet tool! This simple tool will guide your self-discovery journey, helping you uncover your authentic self and regain personal power. Download now and start your transformation today!- https://mailchi.mp/mariafuentes/rediscover-yourself-the-muse
For personalized 1:1 coaching, visit Maria’s website at mariafuentes.net or email her at info@mariafuentes.net for guidance.- https://mariafuentes.net/
what are triggers in the past? I've come up over and over and over again. And that keep coming up in your relationships that you can use as a roadmap. And then you can hand over to your partner and say, Hey. Look at these are my downfalls. I've had these as triggers. I'm not too good at this. I'm not too good at that. What are yours? Let's give each other notes on how to love each other For years, I struggled with toxic relationships and understanding my own emotions. I found myself repeating the same cycles with different people and living in victimhood. I am Maria, your host, and I specialize in self mastery coaching. I've spent the last few years working with various therapists in order to heal my own traumas and help others. This podcast is your dedicated resource for gaining emotional intelligence, nurturing self awareness, and cultivating healthy relationships. If you're prepared to master your emotions, improve your relationships, and create captivating self confidence, Then this podcast is for you. Thank you for listening and welcome to this week's episode. Hey guys, welcome to this week's episode. We're going to get into a juicy topic of what a toxic relationship is versus a healthy triggering relationship. And the reason I came to talk about this today is because I was thinking, I was like, what is so different about the relationship that I'm in? What am I doing differently? And ways that I can articulate this to you and bring you guys some information on social media and on here. And. Versus what I've had in the past and the toxic relationship that I've had in the past. And of course, you guys know if you follow me for any amount of time, it all starts and ends with us. And ourselves are true, like who we are to our core. And we are going to be a reflection of that. So if you're in a toxic relationship, there's toxic traits that you probably still have to work through and analyze. And. Have awareness around. But I also realized just recently that every relationship is going to trigger you. Not only romantic ones, friendships, family dynamics. They're going to trigger parts of you that still need attention. They still need love. They still need care. And so we're going to get into this and dive into it this week. Because I would have had this question a couple of years ago, I would have had this question last year. What is the big difference? Because we think that triggers could be toxic. And if people are constantly triggering us or. If we feel triggered in a relationship that it must not be the relationship, it must be a red flag. It must be all these things, but I really truly believe that triggers are there for us to lean into. But before we dive into this episode, I do want to talk about my intensive coaching programs that I've launched this year. Haven't really talked about it much on here, but I have 90 minute intensive and I have three different options. I have one for my single girls that are in the dating scene that are really wanting to attract the man that they desire and are willing to do. I wanting to do it from a place of power. And then I also have an intensive for my girls in a relationship that made me feel stuck in the relationship. They've missed that passion. They miss that excitement. They miss the thrill. They feel disconnected from their boyfriends, from their husbands. And then I have one for my ladies that have gone through divorce or heartbreak. Because I've been there, I've been through all of those and I want to help you all. And they're 90 minute intensive. And if you're listening to this episode, because it is my very first time talking about this on here. I'm going to give you guys 50% off that intensive. And what that intensive is. You're going to get a questionnaire for me before we even get on a call. It's a very intensive questionnaire. That's going to help me understand your past, present and future. Where you were, where you're at and where you want to be. And then before our call, I'm already going to have a planet and outline for us during our call. We're going to get, when it's, when I say intensive, we're going to get deep. We're going to get into the emotional stuff. We're going to start breaking up some cycles in our call, some toxic traits that we may have. I'm going to find those blind spots say you're not seeing, and we're going to shed light on them, or we're going to have the most amazing intensive together. That's going to be energetically shifting for you. For you to hit those quantum leaps that you want and whatever area it is that you're struggling with. And then after that, I'm going to give you a three month plan and I'm going to have touch ups with you after that through Voxer, which is a walkie talkie application to help you and make sure that you're on track. And if you have any questions, I want to help guide you during those three months. So. If you're listening to this, you will get 50% off. Like I said, so I am obsessed with these intensives because honestly I wish I would have had something like this when I was in a toxic relationship, because it's hard for us to understand. If we're the problem, they're the problem. What's wrong. We just know that we're unhappy, especially if we're in a relationship, we just know they're, weren't happy. We don't know what it is. What's causing that unhappiness. Or if you're single and you're not attracting the person that you want, and you're not sure again, if it's you, if what is it that you're attracting? Why are you attracting that you're not attracting what you want? You're tracking a lot of the same stuff. And when you're going through heartbreak, when you're going through the divorce, you're so lost. Like I remember feeling so lost when I went through my divorce. And so when I created these, I did it so intentionally in the energy of. We're going to make some shit happen. We're shifting some energy. After those 90 minutes. Your energy will be shifted, lifted. We're going to, alchemize where you're at and we're going to take quantum leaps together during those 90 minutes. And so if you feel called to, and if you have any questions, like always, you can DM me any questions, but that's all I have to say about that. And by the way before I said I was going to continue on, but by the way, I'm back in my closet. There's something so cozy about just. Being in my closet when I talked to you guys, it's like, I feel safe. I'm in a bubble. I know no one's going to come distract me. No, one's going to come look for me in my closet. So I feel really safe and I feel really like calm. And it's just the vibe just. I thought that I should let you guys know. So you guys can get a visual of where I'm at. Right out and it just feels so good, especially with this type of conversation. Anytime. I talk to you guys about emotions, relationships, and things that are really meaningful. And I want you to go deep in, I want you to really just tap into that energy with me of safetiness, because anything you're feeling or thinking somebody else has, has felt and thought before and has struggled with it. And that's my intention with this episode. And every episode is that you leave here. Feeling heard, feeling, seen, feeling validated. And also with some tangibles, right? I want you to, in my own journey with what I've learned, With what I've I continue learning that you leave with some good nuggets. So, okay. Now I'm going to stop rambling. and we're going to get into this episode. So let's start off with the acknowledgement and the understanding that every relationship will trigger you. Whether it's romantic ones, friendships, family, family, dynamics, whatever it is, work relationships, you are going to get triggered because your triggers are yours for your, for you to own. They're not anyone else's. I think triggers has, has become such a mainstream word and red flags and all these things have become such a mainstream word, but it's very projecting of a word it's I got triggered. And it's almost like something outside of you cause that no, the trigger is yours. It's it comes from within you. It comes from your upbringing from your. Self-beliefs from your. Negative cycles that you get stuck in your patterns. That's what gets triggered and. Like I told my boyfriend and I talked about in the last episode with him. Triggers our wounds and wounds don't usually hurt too much. Right. If they, if they've healed, some that'll hurt too much, but once somebody bumps into that wound, it hurts and it hurts like a mother effer. It hurts like hell and it makes you angry, right? Really just brings out this like irritation. You're like, why would he do that to me? Because when somebody hits you. Or touches like a burn you have or a story you have, or a bruise that you have, it hurts and you instantly want to project anger towards that person. But guess what? That bruise, that burn, that that wound is yours. It's on your body. That person didn't put it there. Someone else did. But it's yours to own. And so. When I say every relationship is going to be triggering. There's triggers and then there's toxic behavior and there's toxic triggers. And there's ways that people will use your triggers against you in manipulative ways, in ways that don't feel good, they will use your own wounds to hurt you. And that's toxic. So let's start off with what toxic relationships are. And I'm talking in a romantic sense, both of the things we're going to talk about today, toxic relationships and healthy triggers in our relationships. I am talking about in romantic relationships. So when you're in a toxic relationship, you lack respect for yourself and that person. And vice versa, that person lacks respect for you as well. Like I said earlier, everyone's a reflection of us. So when we don't respect ourselves enough, we will find an attract people that don't respect us as well. And that behavior becomes toxic because if that person doesn't respect you, they will ignore you. That will scream at you. They will raise their voice. They will. Lash out, they will maybe cheat. They will do things that are disrespectful to you and to the relationship and vice versa. And when I say lash out is that they project their emotions onto you and you do it onto them. I work with a lot of women. I talked to a lot of women and we do that the most because men are an emotional creatures. They're more avoidant. They're more shut down. Logical thinkers and. They usually just want to withdraw and not have any drama happening or they, they want to just talk about it right away. And. And fix it because they're fixers. Where we lash out emotionally when we're not able to understand. And that is toxic. And I think when we can own the fact that we've done, that we've been there, we've acted in those ways and we can. Stop and pause and ask yourself, how can I say this from a place of power, from a place of being grounded. And when I mean by that is how can you feel your emotions before speaking them? How can you understand them? So when you're grounded, before you speak, you understand your emotions and you're not just lashing out whatever initial feeling you're feeling. You're getting down to the core of it, because let's say my boyfriend forgets to make a dinner reservations. And I lash out on him because it makes me angry. Okay, well, that made me angry. Was it really, that that made me angry or it was just something underlying. So when I take that moment to ground myself and to sit with it, I can realize, you know, what, I'm really frustrated. I was looking forward to dinner because it's been a long week. I want to feel pretty. I wanted to dress up. I wanted all these things and I never said any of those things to him. And now I'm lashing out where in his mind, he probably got busy, overwhelmed, whoever, whatever, excuse, whatever was happening in his world. And so when we take a moment to really sit with our emotions, we can come and talk to people from a place of power and groundness, so that's a way to make it less toxic. Another way that we can come up being toxic in a relationship is that you make the other person responsible for your emotions. Kind of like what I was talking about with the wounds. If I made my boyfriend responsible for my emotions, I can say things like you made me feel you did this. You did that. You didn't think of this. You didn't do that. I am making him responsible for what I'm feeling. And again, when we get back down to the root cause of why I'm feeling any emotion. It very rarely ever has to do with that person. And that's going to take me to my next point of toxic behaviors when you're in a toxic relationship, because you're either toxic or they're toxic, you feel like you're walking around on eggshells and that's because emotionally and energetically, neither of you feel safe in that relationship, you don't feel safe to say your emotions to say your feelings. One of you, or both of you feels like if you say the wrong thing, You're going to get rejected or abandoned or emotionally withdrawn from. I remember in toxic relationships I've had in the past. I never spoke what I wanted to speak or say what I wanted to say. Because I felt that. If I said something, it wouldn't cause the other person to withdraw love for me. And so I chose to stay quiet and then I chose to just take, take, take until I exploded. And then there was my toxic right. My toxic cycle. And it's almost like a big circle. So when we're not able to say what we feel. In a grounded place and the other, person's not able to get it and obtain it in a healthy way. Then that becomes toxic. And where I think a lot of us, and I'm going to go a little sidetracked here, but I think this is a really important message is coming through for me to talk to you guys about as women where we really fail ourselves is. When we start to have that emotional awareness, that emotional regulation, and we decide. Okay, I'm going to be vulnerable. I'm going to be open with this person. And they fail us. Over and over and over again, and they can't hold that emotional safety for us. They can understand our feelings. But when I'm saying this makes sure that you really truly are acting. In a way that. Promotes the other person to be open with you. Right? So if you're doing all the right things, you're saying all the right things, you're speaking from your heart, you're not projecting your emotions. You're coming from a place of groundedness where we fail as women is that we stay. Because we rather. Stick to that then. I think that there's something better out there. And we are afraid to leave. We're afraid that maybe it's just me. Maybe I want to my train, but he's just not an understanding. Maybe the man's good at manipulating and the whole situation becomes your problem and what you did. Or he shuts down or he avoids it. And there's part of us that feels guilty for even bringing it up. And so we stay in this perpetual toxic. Relationship. And dynamic where. You know, your emotions will never be safe with this person, but we stay. Because we accept the bare minimum from them. And we know that we'll never be able to get as deep with them as we want, but we just accept the bare minimum. And now that I've sidetracked a little bit, let's get into what some healthy triggers are in a relationship, because I truly believe that beautiful relationships, a beautiful dance, and there's never. Uh, right or wrong. It just has to feel good to both people. And the way I operate my relationship and how I show up in my relationship and how my boyfriend shows up in our relationship. It can be very different than how it feels good to you and your partner and your relationships, or how. You want to feel in a relationship in the future? If you're not in one yet. And so as long as there's respect, healthy triggers are. Let's say my boyfriend triggers something from my past, there was an action that he did and it triggered me in some way, shape or form. If I can own up to that trigger and I am able to emotionally talk to him about this. And let him know, Hey, this isn't you. This is something from the past, but I just didn't like this because of this and that. Person's able to shift that behavior it's like you're giving that person a roadmap to your life. And to your past so that they don't keep hitting that wound of yours, that trigger of yours. That's a healthy trigger. That's a healthy relationship. Like I said, at the beginning of this episode, we are responsible for our triggers. So healthy triggers is feeling the emotion is things from the past coming up. Emotions coming up, but being able to explain them and talk to them, to your partner in a healthy, loving way. And that person accepting it in a healthy, loving way. And if you listen to our last podcast episode about vulnerability, it's not always pretty. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you well, yeah, so if you do this and you do that, it's just going to be beautiful and it's going to be great. No every single time I've worked in it. And I have practice vulnerability because it's a practice. It's something we have to practice and able to in order to be able to get better at it. It's been weird. It's awkward. It's been not sexy. It's been a lot of well, does this make sense? Thankfully. I've gone. Uh, through a lot of emotional healing. Talk to and worked with a lot of therapists. I've studied psychology myself. So I am able now to just articulate and just understand my emotions before I come to him with them, for the most part, I've only not been able to do that once because I'm only human. And even then I was able to show up and own up to it. And I even said to myself, I want to talk to my relationship coach about this because I need to work on my own blind spots. And so that's healthy, right? I can, I, I was very apologetic that I reacted in a way that didn't feel good to me, even though he was like, no, I get it. I understand. I would have acted the same way. That didn't mean much to me because I hold myself to a certain standard now and how I want to show up in my relationship. And so when that trigger came up for me and I didn't for the first time in our relationship handling it, like I wish I would have. I wanted to work on that. I wanted to do better the next time I wanted to not be myself about it, but, you know, see that as, okay. That was a blind spot for me. If this were to happen again, I want to be able to know how to handle it a little bit better. And so. Another way to handle a healthy relationship trigger is that you don't need to fix them and you don't want the other person to fix them. Sometimes you just want to be able to be heard and listened to and validated and reassured. And so does the other person, if that's what they're feeling. And you're able to just be there and there's no fixing, there's not, how do we fix this? How do we make this better? It just is what it is, right. That. Th the trigger from the past is there, you can't fix that. They don't try to analyze and fix. And you know, when I feel triggered or TJ feels triggered. We don't try to say, well, why do you feel that way? You shouldn't feel that way from the past that that go and you feel this way instead, we don't try to fix the trigger. We don't try to fix the parts of us that are wounded because that's our own personal journey and our own inner healing to do. We don't try to fix the other person in that sense. And we also give each other some space. We give, you have to give each other space. That's another way to help to handle healthy. That's another way to handle triggers in a healthy relationship is that you give each other space to feel your emotions. Before. Coming to each other. Reactive. Impulsive angry, upset. Both my boyfriend and I are both water signs. And we say, you know, when the pot spoiling, when we're in hot waters, we don't talk then. Right. We don't talk that. And we don't talk when we've had wine, we actually just made this new rule in our relationship. We don't talk when we're not in the. In the right state of mind about something that's important or something that's heavy to us. Because we need to know where we've gone wrong before. When I use a road roadmaps, what is your roadmap? As you're listening to this, what are triggers in the past? I've come up over and over and over again. And that keep coming up in your relationships that you can use as a roadmap. And then you can hand over to your partner and say, Hey. Look at these are my downfalls. I've had these as triggers. I'm not too good at this. I'm not too good at that. What are yours? Let's let's like give each other notes on how to love each other, how to handle each other, how to respect each other, how to care for each other a little bit better. When it becomes almost like a business transaction in a way like emotions have to be felt. Yes. And you know, I'm a big advocate on that, but when it comes to how to handle emotions in our relationships, It is very transactional is here's what the thing is. Here's what is feeling. You're looking at it in a logical way. You're not looking at it and emotionally, right? Both of you have to put your egos aside. Your emotion society and just see it for what it is. It's not you. And it's not that person, TJ, his triggers is not who he is. And my triggers are not who I am. It's just, unfortunately, the things that have happened to us in the past that have made us feel that way, but both of us have this big understanding and this big goal in life that we want to have a healthy relationship. Never fight. And understanding each other deeply and be there for each other emotionally. So that is the end goal. And this is something that he said the president's for at the beginning of our relationship, he said, this is our goal. So how to react in that way? And when you have a vision and a goal for what your relationship is together, you will treat things differently. You will pause, you will say, you know what. I'm a little too. F-ing angry. Because this triggered the F Mattamy. Let me just sit with this. I cannot speak right now because I want to honor. Our goal, and I need to just walk away from this right now and just feel it out. And come back to you in a different way. And you might come back to that person and they might not be ready for it. And it's this like, dance of, okay. Now my ego can't get hurt because he can't talk about it right now. Or if he wanted to talk to me first, his ego can get hurt. We have to see things logically for what they are and remove ourselves from the emotions. When we speak about each other. When we speak about emotions to each other. And so. That's when you start. Realizing that you're in a healthy relationship, even though there's triggers. And again, the reason I wanted to make this episode is because if you are. In a new relationship relationships at the beginning, you feel pretty healthy for the most part, Unless you're in just a toxic dating cycle. Where with the same people and you fight and you argue, and there's like, All these other dynamics that I won't get into now, but for the most part at the beginning of a relationship, everything's blissful and amazing. And there's not a lot that's come up yet. You're both putting your best foot forward. You're treating the relationship like the most exciting and important thing in your world and your life. And then triggers happen and shit happens and fights happen and arguments happen. And we start dimming that relationship and it doesn't seem that important or that exciting anymore. And we stopped putting in that effort that best foot forward, like we did at the beginning. And then we're like, how did this relationship go to hell? Well, I went to Hallowell because nobody really stopped and just saw the triggers for what they were. And instead they took them personally. They took them to heart. There were fights, there were things said there was. Words that you can never take back. I said, so, if you want to be in a healthy relationship, it's so important for us to own our emotions. And again, as women, if you're listening to this and you're a woman on your emotions, Be grounded when you speak no one to walk away when that person cannot hold that space for you, because if they're willing to learn and maybe they stumbled upon it and they just like, kind of. Tried really hard, but they just didn't do it well enough. That's okay. That's a healthy relationship. No, one's got it down, pat. No, one's perfect. It becomes toxic when you're shut down, when you're avoided. When you're still in Wald, when the person tries to use your emotions to manipulate you or make you feel like there's something wrong with you. We know intuitively when we're in a toxic relationship, but we stay because we're confused. We're not grounded in ourselves. We haven't owned our own emotions yet. So walk away when it becomes unhealthy. So you don't stay stuck in a toxic relationship. And hopefully this episode gave you some clarity on, well, okay. I'm in a healthy relationship, but it does feel triggering and there are moments of doubts. Oh, let me add that on there. Before I end this episode, please let me in. Let me end this. In a way that makes a lot more sense to you guys if all you've ever had and ever, and ever known as toxic relationships. You're going to doubt if you're in a toxic relationship or in a healthy one. And there's going to be moments or you're not, you're going to doubt the relationship itself. Because that's just how we're programmed. If we've always had the opposite. A healthy relationship, doesn't feel safe at the beginning. So you're going to doubt it. And the way that, you know, the difference is in the way that you feel with that person. When the problem start, when the trigger start, how safe do you feel in that person's energy? How do they do they show up for you? Do they show up for them? Even if they're not. Even if the man doesn't understand, like I said, men are not built like us. They're not emotional. Like us. But even if they're not built like us, if they're like, I don't know what it is that you're feeling, but I want to understand, tell me more as they ask questions. They're showing up that's healthy, but it's triggering and you will doubt it. I don't care who it is. I don't care. Who says, what if you've always been used to toxic relationships? A healthy one will feel weird at the beginning. You'll make you doubt things. You'll be like, what am I in the right? Like, it's almost too good to be true. And you're going to, like, fear is going to creep in self-sabotage is going to creep in. But, you know what? I'll leave it at that because we'll talk about sabotaging a healthy relationship on another episode. Because our minds, our nervous systems will go there and it's up to us to recognize that. So I just wanted to add that last part, and I hope that the difference between a toxic relationship. And a healthy relationship that does trigger. You makes a little more sense now, and I can not wait to talk to you guys next week. I hope you all have a beautiful week. Bye guys.
