One common misconception about healing is the belief that you can or should return to how things were before the relationship, or to who you were before it.

Healing isn’t about returning to who you were before the relationship because that version of yourself may not have understood boundaries, recognized manipulative behavior, or prioritized your own needs. When you compare your present and your before, you will of course feel that before was better especially when the wounds of the toxic relationship are still fresh and you’re in a lot of pain. It’s natural to wish to go back but that’s now where growth is and that will keep you even stuck because you ‘logically’ know you cannot go back to that, and you now conclude that things will never be better for you.

You have accumulated a lot of negative experiences from your past relationship, and you just wish you could erase them and go back to where you were before. But since you know it’s not possible, you end up concluding that then healing is not possible for you as things will never be the same.

Actually, one common theme for most people who have been through horrible experiences is that things will never be the same. While that is a fact of life, as life is ever-evolving and ever-changing, for someone who has been stuck in pain for a long time, it carries a negative connotation. It’s like thinking or concluding that as long as they can’t go back to where they were before, then they will be doomed or forever be miserable.

Your mind will find seemingly legit excuses to keep you stuck in the world of suffering. And what better excuse than to feed you the idea that things will never be the same, urging you to simply give up and stop working on yourself?

You might find yourself fixating on the impossible task of “going back to how things were” rather than embracing healing as a process of growth. Healing doesn’t involve rewinding to the past but rather learning from your experiences and evolving. It’s entirely possible for someone who still holds onto that desire to not just return to their former self, but to become even better or more resilient than before. Yes, being in an abusive relationship is undeniably painful, but once you heal, the experience loses its grip on you. You’ll make peace with it, viewing it as a lesson that teaches you about manipulation and the importance of standing up for yourself.

Instead of trying to forget about the relationship or what happened in it in an attempt to convince yourself that it will help you return to how things were, focus on learning from each and every experience. Growth comes from learning, not from trying to revert to your past self. Healing isn’t about going back to who you were before; it’s about evolving and growing from all your experiences, both past and present. Every experience, whether it’s sadness or anger, offers an opportunity for self-discovery and growth.

If you’re tyring to return to who you were before, you’ll still be the same person and susceptible to falling into other toxic relationships. So don’t get stuck so much on wanting to go back to how you were. Instead focus on how can you learn from these experiences? How can your life improve despite being in that painful relationship? Like what are some of the things you can improve about yourself? Is it understanding boundaries? Is it working on your self-esteem? Is it understanding that when you seek validation from others, you will be susceptible to people who will just validate you and then use you later on, or is it just attaining this state of inner peace? Or this state where you are okay by yourself you don’t really need to depend on someone else for validation or for you to feel loved. So healing is not going back to where you were. Healing is learning from your past experiences and even getting to that state of inner peace and living a better life.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.