Boundaries: Don't Be Fooled

The day you finally make those steps away from the toxic one in your life you set up a challenge for them. Every single effort you make to create healthy boundaries between you and the toxic one is like a flashing light saying pursue me to their unhealthy ego and coping skills.

Your healthy boundaries may include things like having the ability to say NO, meaning it, and not apologizing for it. Healthy boundaries may include refusing to allow others to define you, speaking up when you are tread upon, maintaining high expectations for those in your life, recognize the difference between you and others, taking care of your own needs without needing others to care for you, asking for what you need, and allowing relationships to take time before making commitments to them.

Maintaining these personal rules, boundaries, show a sign of higher self esteem, increased stability in your life and in your relationships, greater confidence, a reality-based life, and a more fulfilling life. Who can resist that?!  The toxic one will attempt to recontact you, they will try to reengage you.

Know This

The toxic one will sound so very sincere, so very wounded, so very needy.  Or they will sound so very healthy. They will apologize. They will take the blame. They will sound reasonable. They will say how much they will miss you. They will sound well-meaning. They will seem perfectly innocent and reasonable. They will look like they did in the beginning when you were first attracted to them: too good to be true.

Know this: changing dysfunctional patterns take significant effort and time and deliberate activity. Buying into their false claims will take you off of the hard road toward yourself that you have been walking.

Know this: their mask of perfection is back on. They still believe that they are not to blame and they will return to their toxicity very quickly. Their toxicity cannot remain hidden long.

Know this: that your walk toward yourself is too important to enter back into the cycle of drama, cruelty, ugliness, and heartbreak.

You Have Come This Far

Celebrate that road towards yourself. Continue to create yourself, to learn about yourself, to become who you truly are. Remember to stay on the pathway to yourself by maintaining the boundaries that you have fought so hard to erect...move forward, ever forward; move toward that bright future where you are healthy and your relationships are healthy.

Have no doubt: your healthy boundaries are your key to the life you are longing for.