Toxic Relationships: Is It Love or Programming? Breaking the Cycle of Toxicity 🌟

Have you ever asked yourself, "Am I with the right person?" This quiet question, often laced with doubt, is more than just uncertainty—it’s an invitation to reflect, grow, and align your relationships with your true values. Join me, Dr. Amen Kaur, as we embrace these doubts as a natural and healthy part of your relationship journey. Together, we’ll explore how introspection can deepen connections or reveal when it’s time to let go.

Drawing inspiration from stories like Tina Turner’s, we’ll redefine loyalty—not as blind perseverance, but as a commitment to personal growth and aligned values. Discover how to separate fleeting doubts from deeper issues, recognize the signs of toxic dynamics, and prioritize trust, respect, and empathy in your relationships.

This episode introduces a framework to help you assess your needs, celebrate newfound awareness, and make courageous choices. Let’s make 2025 the year of transformation—where self-love, healing, and a recognition of your worthiness become the foundation for healthier, more fulfilling relationships. It’s time to envision and create the future you truly deserve.

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Relationship Doubts and Compatibility
• 13:20 Recognizing Toxic Relationships and Self-Worth
• 22:07 Embracing Self-Love and Healing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to another episode of the Toxic Relationship Detox. I hope you are feeling grounded and open today because we are diving into one of the biggest, most universal questions in relationships. Am I with the right person? And, because of the time of year, you might be asking that question and I just want to. We're going to break it down so that you can understand why this is a great question to ask. My name's Dr Amon Kaur, so let's get started.

Speaker 1: 0:32

This question has likely crossed your mind at some point, whether you've been married for decades or you've just started dating someone, or maybe you found yourself single and you're reflecting on the past relationships, and this is fundamentally the most important question that we should be asking ourself in any relationship as often as we need to. But the problem is that when we've been in a toxic relationship, there's a lot of feeling guilt and shame around asking these questions. It is completely normal to ask this. Relationships are complex and we grow and evolve life, nature. If you just look around you and you look at nature, anything at all, everything is growing and evolving. So it either grows or it disintegrates. There's either life or death. It's just normal. It's a normal, natural question to ask whether you're still aligned with a person that you shared your life with.

Speaker 1: 1:39

So today we'll explore three key insights to help you unpack this question. One how to identify whether this is a fleeting doubt or a deeper issue. Two, the mistakes we often make is that we're unsure about compatibility. Is it me, is it them? We're going to be looking at those and tools to help you clarify whether you want to work on the relationship or let it go. So I want to begin by sharing something really powerful. Asking yourself am I right with that right person Is not a sign that something is broken, is not a sign that something is broken. It's actually really healthy. It's an invitation to reflect on what you need, what's working and what's not working in your relationship. And, if you think about it, if you didn't ask those questions and you were in a healthy relationship, well, you wouldn't actually have a healthy relationship if you didn't ask that question. Let me explain. If you took things for granted, you would just think, oh, things are the same and we're just ticking along nicely. But if you don't reflect on what your needs are right now, obviously your needs are going to be different in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s, your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and hopefully hundreds, they're going to be different. So you need to reflect on your needs and then look at the relationship as a whole and think, okay, what's working and what's not working. And actually by asking those questions, you allow the opportunity to deepen that relationship even further and give yourself that opportunity to fall deeper in love and know love at a deeper level.

Speaker 1: 3:46

On my own journey, I've experienced those moments of doubts where you're sitting there and maybe it's after an argument or quiet moment when things feel off. Or for me, I remember there was a moment where something just shifted in me and I just thought I feel so humiliated, so devalued, so violated that I thought to myself. I feel so broken inside, so worthless. Over the smallest thing I'm told that I'm not good enough, just devalued in every way, shape or form, as if I mean nothing, I have no value in terms of time and doing what I'm doing. I remember for a moment just thinking is this exactly how I want my daughter to feel? Exactly how I want my daughter to feel? Because that is what I'm teaching her right now. I'm teaching her that it's okay for somebody to treat me like this and for me to put up with and feel this horrible feeling inside of me and is this how I want her to feel? Is this how relationships are supposed to feel? And I like I and probably like you were trained to believe that I'm not allowed to have these thoughts of. Is this the right person to question the relationship at all, to think it's almost like that you brainwash that you've got to keep going. No matter what happens, you have to stay together. No matter how badly they devalue, you need to stay together. But here's the truth Even in healthy relationships, these thoughts arise. It's normal, it's a key. It's understanding what these questions mean.

Speaker 1: 5:49

And just to go back to why it's so important to ask these questions, I don't know if any of you have watched Tina Turner's what's Love Got To Do With it, where it's a film about her life and there's a moment, there's a pivotal moment in there that really struck a chord with me, where he turns around to her quite early on in the relationship and says you're going to leave me, just like the others do or the others have, and she was like no, I would never do that. It's early where you get trained and brainwashed to have this intense loyalty towards someone so that, no matter what they do to you, you don't question the relationship. You don't question what do I need, what's working, what's not working in the relationship. You don't question what do I need, what's working, what's not working in the relationship. And that is a fundamental difference in a healthy relationship and an unhealthy relationship, where you have to blindly stay together and never reflect on what you need and what's working and what's not working.

Speaker 1: 7:06

So asking that question am I with the right person? Is so important. It shows that you're coming from a space that is healthy and sometimes questioning does stem from your own personal growth. Maybe you've changed Because, remember, life is about change. So as you evolve, your needs and desires change and it's natural to wonder is my partner growing with me or are we mismatched in our values and how can we allow the partner to grow and how can we allow this relationship to grow? So those doubts are red flags pointing to a deeper issue. If you're not allowed to question it and if you know that you've got mismatched values or unmet needs and you're still not allowed to really take the time to evaluate whether it's working or not working for you, because there's no chance of actually healing those deeper issues, then that's the problem with them and that's where it does become a red flag, because you're in the relationship and it's abusive, but there's no way of actually healing it.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Okay, so now let's talk about the mistake we often make when we're unsure about relationships. These are traps I've seen time and time again in both my work with clients and also in my own experience. One of the most common mistakes is falling in love with someone's potential instead of accepting who they truly are, where you're waiting for them to change in some way, where you think that if I could do this, x, y, z, this would be perfect. So you put in so much energy, so much. You're trying so hard, somehow trying to learn how to live with something, hoping that somehow it will have less impact on you or that they will change in some way.

Speaker 1: 9:16

But here's the reality People only change if they want to, and they can tell you that they want to change, and the truth is toxic. People do want to not get triggered, they don't want to have trauma, but they can't actually change unless and this is why they don't get therapy they don't heal themselves, they don't really get trauma therapy. They don't really want to face their own pain because they can't have. They are not able to heal that trauma and this is the key here If they can't do it within themselves, no amount of love or effort from you on your part can actually make any difference. If anything, you're wasting your energy, your love, your empathy on somebody else when really you should be using that empathy and love within yourself, Because the truth of the matter is you can only change yourself and they can only change themselves. It's inner work Because the work is for you to heal means that you have to do the work going within yourself. You can't do it outside of yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. It's something that you have to do within yourself, within your own body. It's like going to the gym. You can't go to the gym for somebody. They have to go and do it themselves for the change to occur for within themselves. So if you're constantly frustrated because your partner hasn't met a goal you think is important whether it's career ambition, fitness, emotional availability for you, you need to pause and ask yourself am I in love with who they are today or the fantasy of who I want them to be? Do I want to change them in any way, because the truth is they cannot change just because you want them to change.

Speaker 1: 11:25

The other mistake is ignoring the signs of incompatible values. For example, maybe you dream of having children, but your partner doesn't. Or they're happy to have kids, but they only want children so that they can control or look the part in front of other people, but they're not really wanting to be a parent. They don't want to do the work they don't want to provide for the children financially, emotionally, psychologically. Or maybe you value financial stability and their free spirit and they resist budgeting. These differences don't just go away If you compromise too much.

Speaker 1: 12:09

It's inevitable you will have resentment and that resentment will build over time and it's like the best bitterness pill you can take Resentment. It just eats away inside of you All the love, all the joy, all the happiness that you could potentially have. It just gets all eaten away and it's not worth it because it eats away your spirit eaten away, and it's not worth it because it eats away at your spirit. So it's really important to know what your values are. What's really important to you? If you're somebody that loves the idea of a family, you want to create and build a family unit. If they don't value you, if they don't respect you, if they don't understand you and take care of you and you them. You're not going to create that family unit because what they're going to do is they're going to abuse you, devalue you in front of the children, and that is child abuse. There's no other word for it. It's abusing the child by seeing that one parent harm another parent.

Speaker 1: 13:20

So a final mistake is getting caught up in what's missing. Usually it could be superficial stuff, while ignoring the deeper foundation. And this is key in a toxic relationship. And this is key in a toxic relationship. What they get us to do is focus on that carrot of I'm going to be doing this and one day we're going to be traveling, or one day, once I've studied and I've got this job, then this will happen. It's always one day we're going to have this. But actually, right now, what's happening? Right now?

Speaker 1: 13:56

If there isn't a deeper foundation where you're being valued, trusted, respected, then you don't have that deep foundation of love, respect, compassion, empathy to build everything on. Because, say, if you have this amazing home but there's abuse in the home, you are going to be in pain every day. The amount of abuse that you're going to be dealing with on a day-to-day basis is not going to make up for it. Having that house. Maybe you wish your partner was more outgoing or more stylish, or if they're kind, loyal and treat you with respect. That's 100% what matters. All the rest can be built, but that cannot be built. That foundation is already in that person. That deeper foundation is what you need to look for in any relationship. It doesn't matter how much they earn, it doesn't matter what they studied. If they don't respect you, your time, who you are, then the rest of it doesn't really matter. All the sparkly stuff is just a distraction from substance real substance that you can build on.

Speaker 1: 15:22

So how do you figure out if this relationship is worth working on or whether you need to let it go? I want to share a simple framework which I use with clients as well the ABC loop. It's a way to approach your doubts and create clarity with compassion. Start by reflecting on your own role in the relationship. Have you been pressuring your partner to change? Have you avoided honest conversations? Apologize for your part, and then ask questions like how do you feel about where we are? What's important to you in your relationship? Now, this is only if you've got healthy relationship. If you're in a toxic relationship, this is not going to work. I would say to you you take that same concept and you ask yourself those questions. Reflect on your own relationship with yourself. Have you been pressuring yourself to change to meet your partner's needs? Have you been avoiding having an honest conversation with yourself about what's going on and where you are and apologize to yourself? Forgive yourself that you're in this situation and then ask how do you feel about where you are right now in your relationships and what's important to you to find in a relationship? What is it that you really really need? Okay, just give yourself some space.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Observe them, observe their behavior. Are they trying to meet you halfway? Are they helping you or do they dismiss your concerns? Their actions will tell you everything you need to know. Maybe they've gambled away all the finances. Maybe they've cheated on you and you've caught them. Maybe there's something else when you start to observe their behavior, are they meeting you or are they dismissing you? Are they gaslighting you? That is every single thing you need to know, because their behavior tells you what they're thinking and how they feel about you, and it hurts when you start to see how they really feel about you and what they're really thinking about you. And it hurts to think they don't care. It really, really hurts, but then that is the truth they have no concern for you and they're dismissing your concerns. So then you have to really see. Okay, that is what's really going on.

Speaker 1: 18:21

Third thing is, if you notice any shifts within you or you notice what they really are doing, you need to celebrate your own awareness. Celebrate your own awareness, okay, the fact that you're becoming aware, you're acknowledging and even though it's so hard, I want you to positively reinforce yourself by saying you know, I have started to see, I'm starting to acknowledge what's really going on, and it's painful, but I can accept them as they are. Or can I not accept them as they are and do I need to do something about it? That's where you can give yourself a chance to really acknowledge what's really going on, and that is a huge, huge win. I really want you to celebrate this, even though you might be crying. I want you to give yourself a hug. I've done well, I've done really good here. Like this has been really, really difficult, but I'm starting to acknowledge who they really are.

Speaker 1: 19:27

If you've done the work and it's clear to you that your values or needs are fundamentally misaligned, and it's toxic. It's time to make the courageous decision to move on. It isn't easy. It's heartbreaking. There probably will be a trauma bond. It's going to be tough. It's going to feel like heartbreak. But staying in a relationship where you can't be your full self will only make things harder for you in the long run. If you feel like you've invested so much time already, what happens if nothing changes? Can you live with the fact that you've invested another 10 years into this and you never had even a year of joy in your life? If the answer is no, you owe it to yourself to be honest and make the right decision so that you can find happiness. It's about letting go of what no longer serves you so you can grow and evolve and be the best version of yourself.

Speaker 1: 20:39

Here's what I want you to take away from today's conversation. Asking am I with the right person isn't a sign of failure. It is actually a healthy thing to ask. It's a sign of growth. Use it as an opportunity to reflect, communicate, heal and make the choices that align with you, your truth. You deserve to be in a relationship where you feel supported, respected and truly yourself, someone that celebrates you, cheers you on and, whether it means working through challenges or choosing to walk away, trust you are capable of creating the love you deserve, because everything you need is within you, not within that person, because, ultimately, if someone doesn't make you feel good, I promise you you're not really in love with them, because they're not generating that vibe within you.

Speaker 1: 21:40

If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I absolutely adore hearing from all of you guys. I honestly cannot thank you enough for all the people that find me on different social media platforms and message me, who leave testimonials and comments. Please also share this with someone that you think might need it. Please follow this podcast or rate it.

Speaker 1: 22:07

If you are interested in making 2025 the year for you and you really want to move forward and you know that you are worthy of love and you want to get to a space of feeling like love feels like being at home again, then please do look into the resources section. Book in a one-to-one with me. You can apply and then you can book in some time with me. I don't know how long I'm going to have these one-to-one sessions available, so if you are looking for healing and you're looking to heal the brain in particular, and heal your trauma so you can move forward and become the version of yourself that you truly want to be and find love, then please do book in some time. I'd love to help you in 2025 and get to that stage of really understanding yourself and moving forward and healing yourself.

Speaker 1: 23:05

The most important thing that I really want to get across over and over again is that you are so worthy of love. I wish I could explain to you how important you are in the world and how you deserve so much to feel loved, lovable. You are so loved. It's unreal through Source, the Creator, god, whatever it is that you believe in and really it's like we need to awaken to that, and unfortunately, we've been in these toxic relationships. But that is for you to awaken to the fact that you deserve love. So remember that you are so worthy of love. You're worthy of everything you ever dreamed of, and so I'm sending you so, so much love Until next time.