Bre Wolta is a Toxic Relationship Coach, and her overall mission is to help women feel empowered enough to let go and to heal from toxic relationships.

Jason: “Bre, what’s a quick definition of a toxic relationship?”

I use the term toxic in a way to describe a relationship that's severely dysfunctional. It usually involves gaslighting and manipulation where the other partner deflects that they're doing anything wrong or that they're hurting you because they themselves can't hold that understanding.

Jason: “Does it take two people to heal the relationship?”

Always two <laugh>. I mean, it takes two to make it healthy and it takes two to make it unhealthy which is something that I try to speak clearly to, in that I'm not villainizing one person in the relationship. There might be one person who has more toxic behaviors that are, you know, being exhibited – more painful, more malicious.  

But you wouldn't be in a toxic relationship if you weren't comfortable with toxicity, if you weren't also playing in your own dysfunctional patterns, in your maladaptive behaviors. So, to just blame that person for everything is not helpful because then you get rid of that person, and then you find another person and you do the same thing. So, you have to take responsibility for your part of that.

And that comes through more slowly. First getting out of the situation, getting out of the fog of the situation and being able to hold them accountable for their part. That is important because there's often a lot of justification that's happening, or a lot of downplaying of behaviors. So, we got to get there first. 

And then once we can get there, it's like, okay, how does this person represent somebody in your past? Or what are you gaining from being codependent with this person? It’s helping them understand that there are pieces of this that they can change within themselves so that they don't keep repeating these patterns with people.

Jason: “How do you help?”

I tend to attract women in different stages of releasing.

So, the first stage would be, they sort of have this gut feeling that something's not right in the relationship. They might be feeling hopeless and sad and depressed and kind of like they're banging their head against a wall with, with trying to make the relationship work.

So, they're still in the relationship, but they kind of have this either desire to leave and don't know how, or that a lot of guilt around the idea of thinking of leaving.

Another type of woman that finds me would be very aware that the situation they're in is toxic and has usually left a couple of times and can't stop going back. And so, we do a lot of work around interrupting the need and the reflex to go back to a toxic situation.

The third kind of category of women is the one who has left and knows it's toxic. It was a horrible ending. 

Typically, in all these situations, there's some psychological abuse, there's been gas lighting, there's been manipulation. 

So, helping them really let go of the idea of what they thought the relationship was going to be and who they thought the person was and then healing from the experience.

There's so many nuances in an experience like that. And then to also hold the grief of losing a relationship. Much like the grief of losing any relationship, it's just sort of amplified with all of these other really confusing components that come with your experience.

Jason: “What if someone is thinking, ‘Maybe I’m in a toxic relationship,’ what should they do?

If, you're having any sort of feeling in your body that this is not good, first, just acknowledge that your body's saying that to you, you don't have to do anything with the information.

But then educating yourself is kind of the next step. So, I have a free resource for people. It's a masterclass called seven questions to ask yourself if you think you're in a toxic relationship. It’s an information gathering exercise where I'll guide you through the questions and you just answer them.

That's all you have to do.

And it's downloadable, it's previously recorded, so you don't have to attend a live event for that. But allowing yourself to answer those questions honestly, again, is going to benefit you.

And then knowing that even if you go through the entire exercise and you answer all the questions, like, oh my God, there's still no pressure to do anything with that information. 

You're just gathering data. I'm going to say that a million times you're everything is about gathering the data until it makes sense.

I also hear from women like, “You know, I'm scared to look at it because then that means I'm going to have to leave.” It doesn't mean that, it means that you might have information that conflicts with you staying, but you always have the power of what you're doing.

So, gathering information, I want to take the fear out of that for people because information is power. We know that in every part of our life.

So, if you can gather information without the assumption that you're going to have to change your life tomorrow that's going to help you receive the information a little bit better.

Follow Bre on Instagram! www.instagram.com/lucid.living.with.bre/