Yana*came to me to work on her low self-esteem. She said that most of the things she tries to do, she gets discouraged at some point and drops them. She read in a book that it happens because of low self-esteem, so she scheduled session with me to start to work on it.

Something caught my attention during first few sessions; the way she was talking about her failures had so much confidence in them. “I can’t, I am not capable, why did I decide I can?”, What an idiot I am!,” confidence, which worked against her. I became curious about exploring the sources of these beliefs.

The more we talked, the more red flags I heard from her about the relationship she is in. The way her boyfriend handled her failures and what she was taking away from it was definitely not helping her, it was the opposite. Wrapped up in neutral words, the messages were demoralizing: “Babe, I always told you to stay away from creativity, just do the cooking and you will be fine” - he said after she got denied from a photo gallery exhibition.

Self-esteem or rather the lack it, was part of the issue, but it looked more and more like that there were more factors to address.

Abuse, anger, passive aggression, contempt, conflict, lack of healthy ways to communicate - all this can happen even to great relationships if the partners don’t support and nurture it. But if there is not much self-awareness and evidence of abusive tendencies, it can really spiral down fast and jeopardize the sense of self. Signs of toxicity can be found, not just with our romantic partners, but can occur with our parents, friends, and colleagues. It is sometimes okay to feel anger, it is okay to have conflicts, it happens in good relationships as well, but toxicity comes down to the way things are handled. When unresolved issues in relationships and the way communication occurs, start to attack sense of identity in one or both partners, you have a toxic relationship.

 “I don’t know why, but each time I share something with my boyfriend, I leave discouraged after our conversation, I feel wrong for even starting it”. We talked more about details of how that happens, so Yana* would realize, that these non supportive, diminishing words were not her words, but the words of, her boyfriend who regularly told them in different versions to her. After Yana* had heard them so many times, she started to believe him more than she believed herself. Of course growing up in a family with a father, who had narcissistic tendencies helped to make it easier for her not to advocate for herself.

Over time, working together to help Yana, she was able to admit that she was avoiding naming things that were happening in the relationship with her partner. I applied the Gotman model “Four Horsemen”, to educate Yana on destructive patterns in a relationship and she admitted to all of them happening in her life: criticism, defensiveness, contempt, stonewalling.

But to really work through the root cause, we also need to spend some time processing traumatic memories related to growing up in her family, having low to no support, to build her confidence and trust to herself. With therapy work and empowerment, Yana was able to start communicating openly with her partner and confront toxic things that were happening between them. She is no longer silent about things she doesn’t appreciate. Learning how to communicate effectively and fearlessly she was able to advocate for her needs in their relationship and develop further her creative projects.