Toxic Relationships: Why We Cling to What Destroys Us

People meet, fall in love, get married — a couple of months everything is fine, and then something breaks. Why does this happen? The VitaModo approach looks not at the label "toxic person," but at the very nature of the bond and at the state of the mind that builds it.

Relationships as an exchange of energy

At the core of any bond lies an exchange: "this energy flows, this wave flows." We invest time, emotions, strength into it. And here is the key paradox: there is a pull that works like a magnet, but the toxic element won't let that pull reach full awareness. The bond attracts — and destroys at the same time.

A scale of relationships: needed, neutral, destructive

The doctor sorts relationships by their value to us. Some we truly need. Others are neutral — chance fellow passengers on the morning bus, the ones we "don't really need, yet for some reason keep building." And some are destructive: a bond a person builds with heroin, with delusion, with induced or affective states. Some relationships can become impossible by definition — for instance, when a loved one falls ill.

The tragedy is that we spend our resources on what gives us no advantage. "We spend our resources on what gives us no advantage" — and we keep going, because no one told us it could be otherwise.

Why a person clings to what destroys them

The most paradoxical thing: in destructive relationships the person feels at ease. They are induced — given a scale of values: "this is good, that is forbidden." They build the bond in that haze and feel that it's easy, considering these relationships the most needed of all. Yet the relationship destroys them. So a sick attitude turns destruction into the very thing a person clings to hardest.

Psychosomatics and the doctor's body

The method reminds us that the state of the head and the body are connected. The doctor shares a personal example: you arrive at a house where you were never welcomed — and immediately psychosomatics, a "mad migraine," almost to the point of nausea. This is exactly the point where the physician lives the phenomenon through himself. The body honestly signals a toxic environment before we consciously realize it.

Why techniques don't help a sick head

Hence the warning: visualizations, motivational techniques, "cycles" are destructive if applied to an unhealthy head. "If we do techniques on a sick head, then all our goals are sick." First — mental health, otherwise any goal and any bond will be distorted.

Practice: open your eyes wider

The doctor offers his grandson's image: "Grandpa, open your eyes wider." The first phase is like shouting to yourself "open your eyes wider," restoring homeostasis, and only then "putting on glasses."

1. Open your eyes wider. Name it honestly: is this relationship needed, neutral, or destructive?
2. Count the investment. How much time, emotion, energy do you put in — and what do you get back?
3. Question the "ease." If it's too easy to cling to what harms you, ask: is this an induced attitude?
4. Listen to the body. Where do psychosomatics appear around this person or place?
5. Head first. Don't launch "techniques" or big decisions on a sick head — first restore mental health.