Tips for Ending a Toxic Relationship

The following short poem symbolizes the effects a toxic relationship can have on our growth. Even if growth isn’t our goal, toxicity in relations can either help our happiness fly or paralyze it.

Toxic Relationships poem by Mona Nyree Stephens

Because we are humans, it’s inevitable we are in relationships. Even if we consider ourselves a recluse, we have work relationships, doctor patient relationship, transactional relationship, and many more. With that fact, it’s important to understand the signs of a potentially toxic relationship, when to distance ourselves from it, and when to end it completely.

Signs of a Toxic Relationship

Before we dive into some key indicators of a toxic bond, it’s important to understand the definition. According to the author of Toxic People, Dr. Lillian Glass, a toxic relationship is “any relationship between people who don’t support each other, where there’s conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there’s competition, where there’s disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness.” Here are a few signs we may be engaged in one.

  1. After being around said person we feel drained
  2. A lack of support or desire to see the other one succeed
  3. Grudges or an underlying resentment is present
  4. Dishonesty and lack of trust are present
  5. There is a lack of respect expressed
  6. Being around them feels like we are walking on eggshells

These examples are just a few of the many symptoms, a simple internet search will reveal more.

How to End or Distance Ourselves from These Relationships

So we found out we are in a toxic relationship, now what? Do we cut the person out entirely? What happens if they are a family member? The answers to these questions depends on our personal experience and the level of toxicity the relationship exhibits.

Cutting Out

For the most part, people who we do not share obligations with and whose presence in our lives is strictly by choice, are the relationships we get to consider cutting completely. Those are the relationships that if they continue, will rob us of happiness in the end.

In many cases, the best way is to simply let the person know that this relationship isn’t healthy and because we care deeply for ourselves and the other we are walking away. This can work even in business partnerships but will need to be handled accordingly. The hard conversation of “ending contact” can be done in person, on the phone, through a letter, or any other means of communication and that is something we must determine ourselves. The main points are these:

  1. Be firm and set clear boundaries
  2. Do not engage in the “on again, off again” cycle of behaviors

Then we must forgive and cease contact with said person. In the extreme cases changing our number, getting a restraining order, or moving may be the best way to do this. The number one tip to share is for us to seek professional help to see why we allowed the toxicity in our lives in the first place, to heal, and then to cultivate self-love. The toleration of toxicity speaks volumes about ourselves and deserves to be interpreted.

Distancing 101

In some cases, the toxic person might be our family member, the other parent to our children, or our roommate we are bond to contractually.  In these kinds of cases, cutting the person out of our lives completely may not be possible or something we are not willing to move forward with. What we must do is protect our peace and happiness. The best way to do this is to:

  1. Set firm boundaries and never waver
  2. Spend less time with this person and be honest about the reasons why
  3. Reduce conversations to small talk and avoid triggers
  4. Remember it is not our job to save or try to change anyone
  5. Remember we can love someone from a distance

Another two key tips for ending a toxic relationship are to seek professional help and commit to our own growth and healing. Remember… it’s surely time to grow in an upward direction. So, we must take inventory of the people who help us soar versus the people that keep us stagnant.

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center, Virtual Volunteering, radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Don’t Let Self-Awareness Become a Prison

It’s important we set ourselves free from all cages of our own minds’ creation. Put simply, we cannot let our thoughts, tendencies, or habits become the forces that hold us back from the life we deserve or the goals we set for ourselves.

As Aristotle once said “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom;” it can be the key that sets us free from what within stifles us.  This knowing of ourselves or conscious knowledge of our own character, feeling, motives, and desires is self-awareness. While self-awareness can be the key to freedom from our own internal prisons, for some of us, it’s what keeps us trapped.

The Cage

How does knowing ourselves lead to self-imprisonment? How does it hold us back from a life we truly deserve or our potential?

The answer to both questions is straightforward; we use the awareness reasoning for why things are the way they are or cannot change. For instance, take the person who loses a parent at an early age and fills in the parental role for their siblings as their surviving parent spirals into addiction. This person grows up feeling the need to be in control and due to the addiction also develops co-dependent tendencies. As an adult, this person becomes self-aware of how their upbringing has affected them in their adult life. This person uses it as the reason to define why their relationships have been toxic. They have anxiety when they feel out of control. This person accepts a life of toxic relationships and anxiety, or withdraws from all relationships and only puts themselves in situations they can control.

Circumstances like the previous instance keep us stuck and do not promote growth.

Freeing Ourselves

In order to free ourselves from lives of stagnation, we must use self-awareness as a road map to change. To do this we must follow these steps:

  1. Recognize whether the thoughts, tendencies or habits we become aware of contribute to our growth, goals, or life we’d like to lead
  2. Commit to doing whatever it takes to work on and heal those thoughts, tendencies or habits
  3. Develop an action plan to change
  4. Seek professional guidance and support, when we feel stuck or needed

At the end of the day, knowing ourselves can set us up for either greater life satisfaction and growth, or become the shackles that hold us down. But, we don’t have to let self-awareness become that prison. The choice is ours.

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

The Youth Who Need Our Caring

Rock-a-bye baby, where did you grow?

How young were you when learned that the world was so cold?

How old were you when you learned what it meant to be stoned?

That your momma couldn’t love you more than she loved the fast life?

When DCS stormed in and took you from her in the middle of the night?

Rock-a-bye baby, how did you feel?

How many promises did caregivers break before your faith in them wasn’t real?

How many times were you alone in the world and in your head?

Did you know it wasn’t your fault and you deserved more when you went to bed?

Rock-a-bye baby, how many foster homes did you see?

Did any one of them make you feel loved and or fill your heart with glee?

Did you wonder why no one adopted you when you aged out?

Was there one person that cared for you through it all, without a doubt?

Rock-a-bye baby, did you know?

Did anyone tell you your story’s not unique in the way it unfolds?

That there’s 20,000 just like you that get to answer these questions when they turn 18 too?

The Sad Truth

The number 20,000 the above poem refers to is the 20,000 children who “age out” of the foster care system in the United States each year. There are roughly 400,000 minors in foster care in the United States.

These children at 2 times as likely to suffer from PSTD as US war veterans. The worst part is there aren’t enough foster homes to help each of them through their rough times. These children grow up to face a plethora of negative statistics that include 20% of them becoming homeless upon aging out, 70% of women becoming pregnant by age 21, and 60% of the males becoming involved with the legal system.

These numbers may seem gloomy. The good news is one caring and loving adult is often all these children need to beat the odds. The number 1 way to help is to become a foster parent, however, that is unrealistic for many of us.

Foster Youth Need Your Care

Making a Difference with Less Commitment

There are ways to show up for a child without taking them on full time. Below is a list of ways one caring adult can be a force for change in the lives of a youth who truly needs it.

  1. Become a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA): CASAs are volunteers who are mentors and confidants for foster youth. CASAs play a vital role because they serve as the voice of the foster child in court and advocate for their wants and needs.
  2. Become a mentor: A quick search for “mentor a foster youth” will reveal all the programs in our areas that allow us to mentor and support foster children.
  3. Become a Respite Foster Care volunteer: Respite volunteers will watch foster children while their foster parents are out. This is sort of like baby sitting and add to the loving adults that a child sees.
  4. Donate supplies and gifts to group homes: Foster youth in group homes often go forgotten. A quick call to a local group home could make a child know someone cares for them.

Remember, to change a life and even the future of our society, all we must do is care. Caring is like throwing a stone in a lake; it causes a ripple effect.

by Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Stop Reliving Glory Days; Create Glorious Days

With the holidays rapidly approaching so too is the probability we’ll hear a family member relive stories from their glory days for the umpteenth time. The stories we’ve heard so much we can repeat them verbatim, of how they won an athletic award in high school, the time they shared a cab with Cher, the time they saved someone from drowning, and the examples go on.

These stories bring our loved ones great joy to relive and share but we must challenge ourselves to think why do glory days end in the past? Why are there only a handful of glory day stories in our lives’ story arsenal?

The answers are simple, we’ve stopped creating glorious days!

A Period Where a Semicolon Should Be

A time in the past that is remembered for great success or happiness defines what glory days are. We can’t change the fact that time moves on leaving us only with memories of the past. However, as time inevitably changes we do not have to put a period at the end of a time period. When we do such things, it allows us to stay stuck a past we perceive better than our future. It is harmful to our current sense of self and even happiness.

An extreme example of this would be Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step foot on the moon and who uttered the words “one small step for man.” In his autobiography, Magnificent Desolation, Buzz recounted how he became absorbed in negative thinking and emotions on the journey home from the moon. He wondered “what does a man do for an encore.” Meaning how could he top what he just accomplished. Buzz put a period where a semicolon should have been after he experienced great success. After the landing, Buzz, drank his pain a way for 9 years which caused his marriage for 21 years to end. His prestigious military career also took a dive and ended on bad terms.

If Buzz had adopted the philosophy of Condoleezza Rice of “never spend any of your time being the ‘former’ anything,” he would have put a semicolon after the moon landing. He was much more than a former astronaut.

What could he had done differently that we can do currently?

Stop reliving glory days and instead create glorious days

Create Glorious Days

The definition of glory days is simple. In order to keep those days flowing, we must keep creating times of great happiness and success. We know the first step is to never put a period at the end of anything we do that causes us bliss or achievement. Now what do we do?

We get clear on what we need to cultivate happy experiences, even if we suffer a great loss. Get clear on what is needed externally and internally. Journaling and experimentation can help immensely with this process.

Finally, keep setting goals and focusing on growth. Success isn’t a destination, it’s a road we get to travel until the end of our days. Set goals you can be proud of no matter how small or great.

When we keep these things in our lives intentionally, not only does the quality of our lives begin to change so do the glory stories we share.

The only questions that remain are… What will we knock off our bucket lists? What new experiences will we have? What are the glory days we vow to create for of our present and future?

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Thanksgiving Every Day of Our Lives

The fall season has many of us feeling like Emily Bronte when she said “every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” For those of us in the United States, this season can be summed up in crisp weather, beautiful scenery, great food, and precious time with loved ones. With the greatness of Fall amongst us and Thanksgiving right around the corner, what better time to remember all the things we are thankful for this year?

The Best Time for Gratitude to Shine

While Thanksgiving serves as our gratitude mirror once a year, science invites us to reflect on what we are thankful for on a daily basis. 2020 aside, we as Americans are stressed, with 55% of our populations experiencing daily stress, we are among the most stressed out populations in the world! Moving from one task to another, dealing with family pressures, society, and our own mental well-being can feel like a lot to juggle.

With all this going on, it is critical we make time in our days to reflect on the things that are going right in our world.  The Research shows that expressing gratitude can lower stress hormones in the body, however, there are a slew of other benefits of giving thanks on a daily basis.

A Grateful Pill to Swallow

Gratitude is a powerful medicine for us humans. Keeping a daily gratitude has the power to transform the way we see and show up in our lives. These are just a few of the side effects of this amazing prescription:

  • Gratitude improves psychological health: According to Robert Emmons, a leading researcher on gratitude, it “effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. It also plays a key role in overcoming trauma and contributes to resilience.
  • Gratitude improves physical health: According to a 2012 study, grateful people experience fewer pains and feel healthier than others. They are also more likely to take better care of their health than their ungrateful peers.
  • Gratitude helps with goal attainment: Robert Emmons’ research concludes that grateful people are strivers and make more progress towards their goals. This is speculated to be because gratefulness is an emotional regulator of goal-directed action.
  • Gratitude leads to better relationship: Countless studies have shown that those who express their appreciation for others makes acquaintances more likely to seek ongoing relationships. It also improves the quality of the relationships we currently have.

A Last Plea for Daily Gratitude

If any of us are still on the fence about hopping on the daily gratitude train, consider the story of Addison Moore (name changed to protect her identity). Addison is a 26-year-old working for a young nonprofit. Meeting her funding goals keeps her in a constant state of anxiety. For all of 2019 and much of 2020, Addison found herself in a constant state of agitation. She woke up complaining about her life, blew up at traffic daily, and found her solace in sleep.

Addison heard about the power of appreciation in a book and began a gratitude journal in may of 2020. Addison was desperate for a change and began jotting down a few things she was grateful for each morning and before dinner. Addison didn’t think it would help and struggled for things to be thankful for.

By August her mind was racing with things she felt grateful for and she reports that her anger has completely vanished. “I still get frustrated sometimes, although it is extremely rare and it doesn’t boil over into rage like it use to. A gratitude journal gave me my life back!”

Do we need any more proof before we give ourselves the gift of living like it’s Thanksgiving every day of our lives? Take it from the scientists who dedicate their time to this study and take it from Addison who did a 180 on her life. Let’s make this gratitude plunge together for Thanksgiving and beyond!

by Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Sticks and Stones Bullying

Sticks and stones may break his bones but words will never let him rest

They eat him up then churn his guts, like vermin they infest

He can’t see why they make him cry, he wonders if he’ll ever know

He is a prisoner at school and home, there is just no safe place for him to go

Each day he’s the pray for kids to slay and his father is just the same

Even all alone in his room his thoughts repeat this negative game

He questions if life is just a strife as he repeats the same day again

He feels so small and hates it all when will he find a friend?

All alone he’ll never know, at 13 his life he chose to end

Sticks and stones may break our bones but words can end a life

We don’t know what others feel so to everyone we must be nice

By Mona Nyree Stephens

Let the deeper message of the poem Sticks and Stones Bullying sink in as National Bullying Prevention Month has come to an end.

While the scenario depicts an extreme outcome of bullying the internal pain it causes remains the same.  We never know the hidden struggles of another. When people become victims of bullying in childhood or in adult relationships those words often become their internal voice. It perpetuates a cycle of pain and low self-worth. We must think about how our words and actions affect one another.

Over 20% of all children in the United States have experienced some form of bullying and over 30% of adults (in their adult lives) have experienced it as well. What’s worse is 40% of them believe it will be ongoing. On the extreme end, it can lead to the loss of a life. Children who are bullied are 2.6 times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers and 2.2 times as likely to have suicidal ideation. On the less extreme but more common end it leads to stress, loss of confidence, and anxiety. 70% of adults who are bullied experience depression and in 19% of them it leads to a mental breakdown.

With the effects of bullying so detrimental to one’s well-being, no matter the age, it’s important we all ponder how we can be a friendly face to all those around us.

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

The Journey Back to Ourselves

We are the vehicles traveling down this road called life and along the way we inevitably lose pieces of that vehicle. Most of the time these pieces no longer serve us and are replaced with upgraded parts at the next pit stop or let go of completely. However, there comes a time when many of us reach a pit stop and the parts of ourselves that were lost along the road were so important we forget what makes us, us.

That can manifest as no longer knowing what brings us joy, what we are passionate about, or even the aspects of our personalities we adore. How do we get this specific type of amnesia? How do we prevent it? How do we rediscover who we are, if we find we lost ourselves? The answers to these questions are the journey back to ourselves.

Drawing a Blank on the Journey

An accident where we bump our heads or suffer a traumatic brain injury isn’t how this type of amnesia creeps in, despite how the movies depict it. In real life, the process of forgetting who we are is subtle and often happens over a period of time. The way this manifests will look different for each individual but it always involves the same two elements.

  1. Total immersion in a person, cause, or activity
  2. Giving up the activities we enjoy or part of ourselves

Who would willingly stop doing the things that bring them happiness or repress parts of themselves they admire? It seems ludicrous. Yet, it is the case and is oftentimes done unconsciously. Imagine someone entering a relationship where the other person becomes the center of their universe or becoming immersed in the pursuit of a career and everything else suffers. There are countless examples of how the amnesia can show itself, but it begins with total immersion in a person, cause, or activity. Once the person is immersed, it is easy to put off doing the things that once brought them joy or even expressing themselves in the manner they use to. It’s subtle. It takes time.  But one day we look and realize we lost ourselves somewhere along the journey.

Prevention Tactics to Getting Lost

Don McPherson says it best, “true prevention is not waiting for bad things to happen; it’s preventing things from happening in the first place.” When it comes to losing ourselves, the easiest cure is to never lose ourselves in the first place. This can be done in a plethora of ways, but the best recipe for prevention is as follows.

  1. Schedule time for the activities, people, and things that energize and recharge us weekly — or monthly at the least. These things must become sacred and treated as such. It’s easy to let circumstances dictate our schedules but much like a doctor’s appointment, once it’s scheduled, only an emergency would stop us from following through. We must treat these parts of ourselves the same way.
  2. Make a list of the values and personality traits we love about ourselves, then make a quarterly journal practice to make sure you are still living out those values and expressing those traits. Even when we are in total immersion, an honest quarterly check of where we are with ourselves can help us course-correct when needed; before it’s too late.

At the end of the day, these prevention tools seem simple yet they are paramount in helping us set boundaries and gain self-awareness of the subtleties that contribute to loss. Remember this particular type of amnesia can take years to manifest and it happens through subtle changes over time.

From Lost to Found

Now that we know how we lose ourselves and ways to prevent it, what should we do to find ourselves if we realize we have lost ourselves? Waking up and realizing we no longer know who we are can be one of the most depressing experiences of our lives. When asked what we like to do or what we love about our identities, our answer is “I don’t know.”

While this may seem devastating, it’s an opportunity to get curious. The road back to ourselves begins with curiosity and experimentation. When we are lost the best thing we can do is write down the things that use to bring us joy, the parts of ourselves we use to love, and make the effort to step back into those things and ways of being.

Sometimes we find out that those activities or traits no longer bring us joy. That’s when we try new things. We make a list of activities we’d like to try and take ourselves out on “dates” to do these things. We think of the types of people we adore and what personality traits and values we love about them. We ask ourselves what it looks like if we were to step into those traits. We let curiosity lead the way as we experiment, rediscover, and uncover the person we are again.

It’s helpful to explore why we allowed ourselves to slip away from us in the first place but the most important step – once we find and get back to a place where we feel whole and that we know ourselves again- is to practice the prevention techniques.

by Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We invite you to discover inspiring and effective ways to care for yourself and to serve others.  Now more than ever, caring is what we all need most. Caring for our self.  Caring for others around us.  Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before.  So, become a Custodian of the Caring Movement and help create the world we need right now, the world we want for our future generations.

UCA resources available to help include the Turbulent Times Resources Center,  radio show, publications and online store offering members huge discounts and always free shipping.

Tap Into Your Inner Navigation System

Imagine what life would be like if we had a direct line to our intuition that we could pick up and dial into at any time. This line would instantly connect us to the version of our self who knows what to do in order get to the other side of any obstacle, trauma, or experience we’re currently facing. We could gain knowledge of how to cope, what step to take next, or just the exact words we need to hear in the moment. This inner navigation system is available on demand. We just need to tap into it.

inner navigation system

That direct line may seem like some futurist technology out of a science fiction novel, yet it’s something that exists. It’s something that we can harness for our self through the tool of journaling… a specific type of journaling.

A Powerful Journaling Practice

The benefits of journaling are getting broadcasted everywhere. Several psychologist, like James W. Pennebaker, have dedicated a great portion of their research to understand the subject better. Some of the findings are that journaling boosts the immune system, helps us process complex emotions, better problem solve, and a slew of other benefits. One benefit that none of the research seems to point to is journaling’s ability to connect us with our internal navigation system, in other words our intuition.

The best journaling technique to access our intuition involves hemisphere switching while journaling. This involves writing with our left hand to answer tough questions, go deeper on experiences, emotions, and whatever comes up. By doing so, we tap into our internal guidance system, on demand, and get responses that normally wouldn’t occur. This has allowed many people to navigate challenging life situations and emotions with greater ease.

How It Works

The left side of our brain controls the right side of our body, and vice versa. About 90% of the population is right-handed. That means when they write, they are left-brain dominate. The left side of our brain is the part of our brain responsible for logic and reasoning. So, 90% of the population accesses mainly the logic and reasoning powers of their brain when writing. When the writing hand is switched for a right-hander, it allows access the right hemisphere of the brain where creativity and intuition reside. This taps into the intuitive navigation system instantly.

What About The Left-Handed or Ambidextrous?

For about 10% of the population that are left-handed this specific journaling exercise may not work. However, there are other effective ways for left-handers to access the opposite hemisphere of the brain.

One powerful way to do so is through meditating before journaling. Meditation relaxes us and according to Marilee Zdenek, we are more receptive to right-brain insights when we are relaxed. Another manner in which we can access the right side of our brain is by singing, listening to new music, or playing an instrument before journaling. Psychologist, Terry Lyles, found that listening to or performing music helps to stimulate the auditory cortex of the right-brain. These are some of the quickest methods to hemisphere switch.

Test Out Your Inner Navigation

A longing for coffee, $5.00, and the knowledge of where Starbucks is will get us no where unless we take the actions of going there and ordering our drink. The same is true with the knowledge just gained here about journaling. The next time you sit down to journal, try hemisphere switching and tapping into your internal navigation system to experience it’s power for yourself.

By Mona Nyree Stephens, contributing author

We are all working our way through a changed world as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. We may no longer be quarantined or under stay-at-home orders, but everyone is stretched to adapt like never before.  All of us are in this together. Now more than ever, caring is what we need most. Caring for our self. Caring for others around us in our communities. Life now demands caring, resilience and compassion like never before. This is a great opportunity to create the world we want for our future generations. We invite you to join us in creating a caring movement!

Would you like to read more about UCA caring resources and products? We have other blogs on Unified Caring Association and our products, caring in our communities, and caring the UCA way!

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