Why Breaking Up With a Toxic Person Feels Like Death.
People stay in toxic relationships sometimes because they want to avoid the pain of having to get over that person after a breakup.
They’d rather disassociate from the difficulty they’re currently experiencing with that person than face the full emotional weight of it.
To continue a relationship with someone toxic, you have to disassociate to some degree. You cannot be fully rational, admit that this person is no good for you, and still have the emotional capacity to try to keep the connection alive. The only way to do that is by mentally preserving the part of your brain that allows you to not fully feel the pain of what’s happening to you.
And because you’ve been suppressing and numbing that pain for so long, what I find is that this is why people experience the most intense withdrawal symptoms when the breakup finally happens.
It’s not just grief over the person, it’s the flood of everything they never allowed themselves to feel while they were still in it.
They don’t have the mental strength to feel all of that pain at once, because for so long they’ve relied on the dopamine they received through sporadic attention and affection. That intermittent validation became their emotional reward and a form of survival.
Toxic people can end up doing whatever they want to someone, because that person’s inability to feel pain and process it in real time ends up enabling the toxic person to go even further.
Why wouldn’t they? After all, they’ve seen you advocate for yourself, say how much they hurt you but then stay. You told them they mistreated you, but you’re still around. Every time you break up, you linger. And they read that as: You’re not going anywhere.
This isn’t me victim-blaming in any way. In fact, I hope it liberates victims because understanding why you keep looping through the same cycle is the first step to changing it. You’re not doomed. You’re not sentenced to a life of pain and trauma. There is an explanation.
So many people who’ve been in unhealthy dynamics eventually ask themselves:
“Am I crazy?”
“Have I lost my self-worth?”
“What’s wrong with me for giving them so many chances?”
But if someone could just sit next to you, compassionately, and say:
“There is nothing wrong with you. You have a particular way of processing pain and it hasn’t been the healthiest way. But that’s not your fault. It’s what helped you survive.”
Avoiding pain might have helped you endure but it also left your emotional wounds unhealed. That avoidance keeps you emotionally stagnant. Meanwhile, the toxic person on the outside gets worse, and you continue to sink deeper. You end up saying things like, “I’ve been with this person for so many years,” or “I’ve done and put up with so much beyond my capacity.”
Eventually, your system can’t take it anymore. You feel like you’re falling apart. You fear that if you do let yourself feel all that pain at once, your body will go into complete shock. That’s why breaking up with a toxic person can be one of the most painful experiences someone can go through.
You’re not just mourning them you’re mourning every version of yourself you lost just to keep them in your life.
So if you’re asking yourself:
Why do I feel so devastated, knowing they treated me so badly? I shouldn’t even care about them.
Know that the devastation comes from years of suppression.
Years of dissociation.
Years of holding it together while falling apart inside.
And every time you stick around and process the pain in this manner, the other person loses more and more respect for you because you keep showing them that you’ll accept the very thing you’re fighting against.
But now that you know what’s happening in your mind and body, you don’t have to keep repeating it.
Healing is possible.
And you are not broken.
📩 If this spoke to you, forward it to someone who needs these words.
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With love and dua x,
Zainab