Overcoming Toxic Relationships – Stopovers – Stopovers

” He’s a toxic person! “, we repeat to describe this type of person who harms those around him. If it is easy to spot this kind of creature, it is more difficult to get rid of it, especially when relationships of friendship, love or even kinship bind us to them. At work, we often come across a narcissistic colleague, with a steely smile and who does not say hello to you. Between friends, it happens that even in a long-standing relationship, one of the people abuses the kindness of the other. The person ” abused » fades away to accomplish his « to have to as a faithful friend. The list abounds with examples within the same family, or couples in love and married.

But what do the specialists say about this and how to free yourself from these relationships or at least manage them? Momo, life coach and mediator of parental and marital relations, recalls that a No firmness is essential. ” The narcissist needs to listen to the refusal and know where his limits lie with his colleagues “.

Awaken the inner child

The method on which Momo relies in her workshops in Dahab, where she has lived for 15 years, is Wounded Inner Child or the wounded inner child. It is about childhood wounds that have not been healed, wounds that we are unaware of, that cling to our memory and lead us into toxic relationships. ” It’s a question related to the law of attraction, insists Momo, when you have distant wounds, you feel underestimated, you are haunted by this feeling that you are not good enough and you feel strive to do things to be liked “. This is the underesteem that governs all kinds of professional, friendly or romantic relationships. She explains the most common example in the married couple. When a man in his childhood experienced any injury; for example the stereotype prohibiting the boy from crying because to be a man, you must not cry. He grows up and creates defensive strategies to stop hurting himself, he not only stops crying, but especially to show his emotions. By suppressing his emotions, he becomes in the eyes of his partner a man without feelings, which creates countless problems with his wife because she does not really know him. In his group work workshop titled InnerChild, Momo accompanies the other to find their inner beauty as God created it. ” I help group participants to face their distant wounds, to reconnect with themselves and with God is the secret to Momo’s success in her intensive 12-day workshop. And to conclude: I can’t change anything if I can’t change myself. I can’t change the other, but to dive deep inside, to love myself: to know why I don’t cry anymore today and at this moment I realize that I can cry again » .

– Momo, life coach and mediator of marital relations.

She organizes workshops in Dahab where she lives. The next workshops in Noweibaa: February 17-28, 2023. In Cairo: March 24-April 4, 2023.

– Iman Samir, psychiatrist

Solutions in the eyes of psychiatry

Outside the couple, harmful professional and friendly relationships vary from person to person, depending on each person’s case. However, Iman Samir, psychiatrist, manages to give solutions and a strategy to deal with it:

1- Radical solutions: At work, if I have a big problem with my manager, I can leave work or confront my boss with the problems to find solutions.

2- Do not let yourself be driven by your emotions: this does not mean silencing your emotions. If my boss provokes me, I try to find the climax that hurts my feelings and I work on my emotions to break the cycle of anger. (In married life, the wife who complains about her husband, who comes home late every night, can arrange her emotions and take note of going to bed early instead of waiting for him and having a quarrel).

3- Radical consent: it is looking at reality as it is. This does not mean giving in and getting caught up in unhealthy relationships with others. But normally, relationships become harmful because one is tempted to embellish the truth and make excuses for the other. For example, in intimate friendships, being able to see the truth of the friend in the present moment without embellishment, recognizing that it is not the same friend from childhood, he or she keeps criticizing me, complaining and taking advantage of me. From the awareness of reality, of the present moment, I learn to help myself, to say no gradually.

4- Stay as it is, persist in the problem. The majority of people prefer that the solution comes from outside, outside of oneself, and to keep complaining about the boss, the friend or the sibling.

Basically, the magic word and starting point for dealing with harmful relationships is a No that we learn to say to set our own limits.

Emotion-focused couples therapy

Emotion-focused psychotherapy has been successful since the 1980s. Known as EFT (Emotion Focused Therapy), it is beginning to gain ground in Egypt with a number of therapists joining it to treat the couple’s problems in particular. ” This therapy sees emotion as the central force organizing couple interactions. as it is defined on the EFT website. The behavior of one partner elicits a complementary reaction from the other partner, resulting in the couple adopting a cyclical and rigid style that causes distress. If the relationship of the grooms is based on one positive partner and the other passive, the first is the chasing type and the second is the withdrawn. The positive triggers, attacks, then the out does not respond because he is developing a defensive strategy. Thus, the famous we need to talk » sows anxiety and foresees the alarm of an argument in the couple and draws them into the cycle or the tornedo infinity.

Emotion-focused couples therapy helps partners explore their latent emotions, which leads to new feelings of safety for both. Most often in meetings with the couple, they feel secure to find a third person who listens to them; therefore, the two listen to each other, while they weren’t used to it. And from there, each partner realizes and recognizes his role in the infinite cycle in order to undo the circle and make maneuvers in the famous cyclic style.

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