When your marriage or relationship is in danger, your security is threatened. Humans are wired to bond and rely on one special relationship for emotional support through life’s ups and downs. Unhappiness in your relationship affects your health greatly. It has a bigger impact on you than you think.

Most of you have heard of PTSD. But did you know that an unhappy relationship can cause PTSD? Such as anxiety, depression, increased heart problems, and a weak immune system. This is all part of how an unhappy relationship affects your health. Unhappy or toxic relationships may be the biggest threat to your health.

You can do some things to improve your mental health and give your marriage a chance to survive.

Here are 5 ways to save yourself from toxic relationships that make you sick:

Find an individual therapist who understands adult attachment

Unfortunately, most individual therapists are just therapists for individuals. If you are in an unhappy relationship, you can find a therapist who understands how adults relate. Helping an individual bond with another person requires a deep understanding of attachment theory.

A good therapist will help you understand how to present your problems and issues to your partner. You will learn how to arouse your partner. Just telling you that you need to set stricter boundaries won’t work. It can backfire and make your relationship worse.

Raising boundaries and making everything your partner’s fault is dangerous. Soon, you will blame your partner for everything. They will feel more and more isolated and blamed. This will make your partner even more angry with you. This is never the intention but is often the result. Your therapist should be skilled at helping you overcome your fears and stop the blame game.

Take medication when necessary

Do you suffer from depression or an anxiety disorder that makes it difficult to function and perform in your daily life? Then maybe your biology needs some help. There is no need to feel afraid or ashamed to take medications to help you get rid of your biological dysregulation. You need to pay close attention to how an unhappy relationship affects your health.

If you have a thyroid problem or diabetes, both of which affect your mood, you might be open to taking medications. With medical supervision, medications can help you feel better more quickly than you could with treatment alone. If you ignore your need for medication, your emotional problems may cause your partner to feel emotionally distressed.

According to Sue Johnson’s book “Hold Me Tight,” this can destabilize marriage and put you in a “looking for the bad guy” pattern. You should remind yourself that you are not a bad person if you need to take medications. But you will become one in your partner’s eyes if you don’t take your medication when you need to.

Find a support group

There are support groups available for almost every type of problem. When an unhappy relationship is affecting your health, reach out for support. Do a Google search for support groups in your area.

If you are an overworked mother, the spouse of an alcoholic, or an alcoholic, some groups can help stabilize your emotions. If you are struggling with your behavior, there is a support group for you. No matter your struggle, you cannot carry the burden alone.

Ideally, your partner will be the person you turn to for social support. If they are not, you need to seek social support elsewhere. Once your relationship becomes happy and healthy enough, you can find the support you need in your relationship.

Family can be a positive or negative form of social support. Don’t rely on a dysfunctional family to provide emotionally healthy social support. They can’t give you what they don’t have to give. If family members are healthy and support you emotionally, that’s great. However, if you are struggling emotionally now, they probably were not healthy enough to give you what you needed when you were younger.

In most cases, you can’t get what you need now from people who couldn’t give you what you needed in the past. Your journey to understanding how an unhappy relationship affects your health and how to protect yourself along the way comes with a warning.

Do not open your heart to those in need

The quick way to an emotional or physical relationship is to find an emotionally needy relationship into which you can pour your heart out. It is very easy to do and can feel great. There’s nothing like feeling like a wounded person has understood you in the same way you were hurt. But here lies the problem. Your human need for connection can be very strong.

Emotional connection is the catalyst for pair bonding. A new close relationship will activate the chemistry of pair bonding with the release of dopamine. This will make you want more and more new love.

It doesn’t matter how good you think your boundaries are. You give them away if the dopamine gets this

Many people did not receive a model from their parents for a healthy, lifelong relationship filled with love. And you only know what you’ve been shown and taught, right? So it’s up to you to find out more. Social modeling research conducted by Albert Bandura demonstrated that we influence others by what we show them, not by what we tell them.

Learning to be an emotionally stable lover for life takes a lifetime of commitment and practice. Believe it or not, in most cases, your partner is the best person to tell you whether you will be a secure lover for life.

Being in a relationship that makes you unhappy is emotionally destabilizing. So much so that in the presence of your “dear one,” you become a monster, and so does your partner. An unhappy or toxic relationship causes a negative cycle of arguments that turns into a dangerous spiral that is difficult to escape from. Deep fear is the root cause of all health problems in relationships. In Emotional Attachment, which I co-authored with my wife Paula, I tell the tragic story of a woman named Sonali Deraniyagala, who lost everything she held dear.

In her book, “Wave,” she recounts how she and her family were tragically swept away by a 100-foot wave. In an instant, Sonali lost everyone she clung to for safety. The physical and emotional trauma Sonali experienced on that horrific December day in 2004 had a profound impact on the following days, weeks, and years of her life. I felt a loss, both physically and emotionally.

Most of you will never encounter a tsunami. You are unlikely to witness your entire family being lost in such a tragic event. However, statistics indicate that many of you will experience an unhappy or toxic relationship. An unhappy relationship affects your health as if you were exposed to a tsunami. Without your own dramatic tsunami story, you may ignore or write off your symptoms. Defending, blaming, and blocking are ineffective.

Opening your deepest heart and sharing your entire being with someone takes courage. If the person you trust withdraws into your “self,” you begin to break down emotionally. You feel betrayed and deeply hurt. That’s when you become defensive, blaming, and blocking. You cannot think your way out of marital conflict. More intelligent, self-controlled people will find themselves feeling helpless and out of control in the presence of a partner who threatens to leave an unhappy relationship.

No amount of thinking will stop the arguments or heal the hurt. Your thinking will only appear defensive and will only make matters worse.

If you make demands, shift blame, and try to prove that your partner is at fault, you will be met with the same behaviors you will be met with.
If you try to take the “high road” by refraining from arguing and refusing to argue, your partner will feel rejected and abandoned.
If you are in an unhappy marriage, you must understand the root of the problem – you do not feel loved, cared for, and secure.

You may lose hope that your partner can provide the love and care you need. This creates a spiral of fear, which will make you trust your partner less and less. over time. The spiral of fear becomes very emotionally destabilizing. Your view of yourself will become more negative. You tell yourself and believe that your partner doesn’t love you. You will think that your partner is insecure about love. The best solution for an unstable relationship is couples therapy.

There is a great deal of scientific evidence to support that most couples who receive emotionally focused couples therapy can escape their cycle of conflict and improve their relationships in the long term. We often hear that one member of an unhappy couple is not ready or willing to seek help. What if your partner doesn’t want to participate in couples therapy with you?

Here are 5 ways to save yourself from toxic relationships that make you sick:

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