It’s probably no surprise that being in a traumatic relationship can lead to PTSD in your next one (and in general). What is surprising, however, is how many horrible side effects this can have. Here are some signs you’re experiencing PTSD as a result of your toxic relationship.
- You self-medicate. There are quite a few ways you can self-medicate: with food, alcohol, Netflix, or whatever you want to use to fill the void. Self-medication is a human thing, but when you have PTSD, it can be over-dramatized. Drowning your sorrows can be one of your only coping skills. Over time, this can be really harmful to your mental and physical health, but you may not know any other way.
- You’re always expecting the worst. You have a gloomy outlook. You think that the absolute worst is going to happen like your partner’s going to die in a car accident on the way home. This sort of thinking totally plagues you, leaving you depressed and anxious. Sometimes in thinking that everything is going to go poorly, you manifest certain outcomes and your fears come true. For example, worrying that your partner is going to break up with you so much that you annoy them and it comes true.
- You find yourself settling instead of demanding what you deserve. When you have PTSD from your last relationship, a side effect could be that you’re settling in your current relationship for someone who isn’t the best fit for you because you worry that you’ll never be with anyone better or you feel as though you don’t deserve anything better. This holds you back from finding a healthy relationship with someone worth your time.
- You have serious trust issues. You can’t get the idea out of your head that your partner is going to cheat on you or that they’re lying about something at work. You have some deep-seated trust issues, leaving you always suspecting that something fishy is going on. Even though you often know that you’re being irrational, you can’t help but be stuck with these thoughts.
- You have an all-consuming fear of abandonment. You constantly fret over your partner leaving you. You feel sometimes like when they step outside the door that they’re never going to come back. You also get jealous of certain relationships they have because you fear they’re going to run off with those people. This all stems from a deep insecurity within yourself and can be hard to move past.
- You suffer from flashbacks and nightmares. These two go hand in hand. Nightmares occur when you’re sleeping and your ex is haunting your dreams. You’re remembering the crappy things that happened and it’s interrupting your sleep. Flashbacks, on the other hand, occur when you’re awake. They’re snapshots of an old event coming back to haunt you. You can smell familiar smells, taste familiar tastes, and feel familiar feelings. They can be like a sensory overload.
- You get caught in obsessive loops. Often when you’ve experienced traumatic events, your brain starts to have repetitive thinking. You get caught in these obsessive loops where you’re ruminating on a subject like self-blame. You just can’t shake the thoughts and they plague you over and over again, worsening by the hour. It takes a whole lot to shake you from this frame of mind.
- You’re constantly criticizing and tearing yourself down. You’re your own worst critic. Nothing you do is ever good enough, perhaps partially because your former partner used to put you down so much. They used to tell you that you weren’t enough so now, no matter what you do, you never measure up to the outlandish standards you have for yourself. No one could be as mean to you as you are yourself.
- You have a fear of or obsession with commitment. You either desperately fear committing to someone, thinking for sure that it’s a trap, or you run full force towards commitment, hoping it’ll save you. Either way, you have an unhealthy relationship with the matter. This comes from insecurity in your last relationship, either from cheating or something like being strung along. It’s not your fault you feel this way.
- You feel frequent guilt and shame. A huge part of having PTSD is unrelenting thoughts of being guilty and shameful. No matter what you do, you feel like a horrible person and like you’ve done something terribly wrong. It may have been partly influenced by your former toxic partner talking down to you. You’re left with feelings of eternally not being enough, even being bad. This gets in the way of you living your life.
- You have severe anxiety. Anxiety is no joke. If it plagues you, it really has a hold on you. After being in a toxic or abusive relationship you can certainly develop anxiety. It may take the form of shaking hands when you’re nervous, difficulty breathing when you’re scared, and/or racing thoughts when you’re restless. Anxiety can strike at any hour of the day and it could be a result of always being on your toes in your former relationship.
