It may be hard to believe, but a toxic relationship can make you sick.

Just like being exposed to a toxic odor in the air or accidentally ingesting a toxic chemical, being in a toxic relationship can have serious side effects on your health.

These side effects can be truly debilitating and life-altering.

If you’re in a toxic relationship, it could more than just dash your hopes of having a healthy relationship — it could even make you physically ill!

If so, it’s important to stop toxicity in its tracks before it gets you down further.

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Here are the five effects of toxic relationships that make you sick.

1. Physical weakness.

Did you know that being in a toxic relationship can cause your body to break down?

The stress you’re under — trying to manage your relationship, processing whether you should stay or leave, surviving toxicity, trying to live your life — can become too much.

What’s the first thing you go to? Your physical health.

The effects of stress on your body are not insignificant. Stress can lead to chemical imbalances, eating disorders, and substance abuse.

It can also lead to respiratory, digestive, and immune system problems. Furthermore, stress can be a significant contributor to sexual function disorders.

Do you suffer from body aches, persistent colds, difficulty breathing, or anxiety attacks, among other things?

Your toxic relationship may be slowly killing you.

2. Mental despair.

Depression and anxiety can rear their ugly heads amidst everything that’s going on.

Toxic relationships are a day-to-day thing. When relationships are bad, more often than not, people think about them regularly.

If relationships are more than just bad — if they’re toxic — you may become obsessively focused on them, causing you to turn away from and neglect the things that matter to you.

Furthermore, toxic relationships fill you with feelings of hopelessness and hopelessness, affect the way you think about yourself and the world, make you suspicious of other people’s motives, and make you feel insecure.

All of these things can lead to situational depression that will get worse before it gets better.

Very toxic relationships that involve severe emotional or physical abuse can lead to clinical depression, which can be difficult to manage and can stay with you for a long time, if not forever.

If you feel hopeless, just want to sleep all the time, isolate yourself, and your moods interfere with your life or work, you may be depressed.

Getting out of your toxic relationship may be the thing that helps you deal with that.

3. Isolation.

Unfortunately, many people who find themselves in toxic relationships tend to isolate themselves.

Sometimes, isolation is imposed by the abusive partner as a way to control them, but more often, people isolate themselves.

They may feel worthless or embarrassed by their relationship. Maybe their friends are tired of hearing about it or they are sitting at home waiting for their person to show up.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned during this time of coronavirus, it’s that isolation is very hard on people.

People need to be with people. People need to touch people.

They need to be surrounded by people who love them. Not having these things can be hugely debilitating.

Loneliness is one of the main causes of depression. It can also lead to unhealthy habits, inability to sleep, and drug abuse.

If you find yourself isolating yourself because of your toxic relationship, your body and mind are suffering.

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4. Self-doubt.

Whether it’s because of the way your partner treats you, belittles you, treats you with disdain, or physically abuses you, the result is that you doubt yourself at every turn.

You doubt who you are as a person, which can affect your work and make you doubt every choice you’ve ever made.

Self-doubt is a malicious thing. The longer it lasts, the more profoundly it will affect your physical and mental health.

Fortunately, self-doubt can be stopped if you leave your toxic relationship and seek help.

Unfortunately, as long as toxicity is present in your life, you can become unhealthy – both emotionally and physically.

5. Drug abuse.

When you suffer from physical and mental problems along with isolation and self-doubt, you feel like you are drowning without having any idea what to do, how to move forward, and how to take care of yourself.
Your relationship is making you miserable and stress is negatively affecting your physical health.

The best thing we can do to manage the side effects of a toxic relationship is to exercise, eat well, and get enough sleep.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t.

For many people, the way they deal with stress is by drinking alcohol, using drugs, and over- or under-eating. All of these things help relieve the pain we’re dealing with, at least temporarily.

Unfortunately, these things end up making us feel bad.

Alcohol and drugs only exacerbate mental and physical health problems. Eating too much or undereating can lead to self-loathing and health problems related to malnutrition.

Bad habits may seem good in the short term, but they will only make us sicker.

If you find that your toxic relationship is causing you to develop bad habits that make you feel bad about yourself, it may be time to step away from the relationship and work on getting healthy again.

Knowing how and why a toxic relationship can make you sick is an excellent way to evaluate whether or not you want to get out of it.

If you realize that your relationship is toxic, you are looking for some way to recognize it and deal with it.

Linking your toxic relationship to the physical and mental struggles you’ve been experiencing recently may give you an extra push to get out.

So, if you are struggling with mental or physical health issues, feeling self-isolated and self-doubt, and find yourself using drugs, it is very likely that your relationship is sick.

Is there someone worth ruining your health for? I don’t think so!

If you are experiencing domestic violence, you are not alone.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline reports that approximately 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States. More than 12 million women and men suffer from domestic violence and abuse throughout the year.

Experiencing domestic violence can happen to anyone and is not a reflection of who you are.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline defines domestic violence, domestic abuse, or relationship abuse as “a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another person in an intimate relationship.” Anyone of any race, age, sexual orientation, religion, or gender can experience domestic violence. According to the NDVH, approximately 3 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by a partner.